Horsforth Featherbank Primary School

SCIENCE

‘A high-quality science education provides the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. Through building up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts, pupils should be encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena’.

The National Curriculum

INTENT

We believe that a high-quality science education provides the foundations for understanding the world through the three core disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. Science should stimulate a child's natural curiosity and encourage a sense of awe and wonder in the world. We intend to foster a sense of excitement and fascination about science by ensuring our curriculum is as practical and engaging as possible.

IMPLEMENTATION

Teachers across the school use the long term plans for science to ensure that skills and knowledge are sequential. Science is taught weekly at Featherbank. We ensure our lessons are as practical as possible as we believe this is how children learn best. We are lucky to have our Featherbank Forest, and we make use of this during science lessons wherever possible. 

Children focus on working scientifically to answer questions about the world around them. They will carry out investigations in each unit, which will give them the opportunity to ask questions, make predictions, solve problems, collect and analyse data and develop their own explanations and conclusions. Children are often given the opportunity to plan their own enquiries in order to develop these skills further and test their own ideas. They are encouraged to present their data in a variety of ways and where possible, we link our mathematical knowledge to our science lessons by using a range of different charts and graphs. Children will build up specialist vocabulary throughout each topic which enables them to engage in scientific discussions.

Early Years Foundation Stage.

In EYFS, children are introduced to science indirectly through activities, play and exploration. Children will look closely at similarities and differences, and patterns and change through the areas of ‘Communication and Language’, ‘Understanding the World’ and ‘Personal, Social and Emotional Development’.

KEY STAGE ONE

In Key Stage 1, children are encouraged to be curious and ask questions about what they notice. They should be helped to develop their understanding of scientific ideas by using different types of scientific enquiry to answer their own questions, including observing changes over a period of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative tests, and finding things out using secondary sources of information.

KEY STAGE TWO

In Lower Key Stage 2, the principal focus of science teaching is to enable pupils to broaden their scientific view of the world around them. They should do this through exploring, talking about, testing and developing ideas about everyday phenomena and the relationships between living things and familiar environments, and by beginning to develop their ideas about functions, relationships and interactions. In Upper Key Stage 2, we aim to enable pupils to develop a deeper understanding of a wide range of scientific ideas. They should do this through exploring and talking about their ideas; asking their own questions about scientific phenomena; and analysing functions, relationships and interactions more systematically. They should encounter more abstract ideas and begin to recognise how these ideas help them to understand and predict how the world operates. They should also begin to recognise that scientific ideas change and develop over time. 

These are the 7 science skills that children will develop through our curriculum:
 

1. Asking questions- asking questions that can be answered using a scientific enquiry.
2. Making predictions- using prior knowledge to suggest what will happen in an enquiry.
3. Setting up tests- deciding the method and equipment to use to carry out an enquiry.
4. Observing and measuring- using senses and measuring equipment to make observations about the enquiry.
5. Recording data- using tables, drawings and other means to note observations and measurements.
6. Interpreting and communicating results- using information from the data to say what you found out.
7. Evaluating- drawing conclusions from their findings.

IMPACT

By the time the children at Featherbank leave our school they should have developed:

• scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
• an understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
• the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.