At Newchurch St. Mary's, we offer a broad science curriculum to spark imagination, fuel curiosity and nurture inspired and confident scientists. Science is about developing children’s ideas and ways of working that enable them to make sense of the world in which they live through investigation, as well as using and applying scientific skills. We provide our children with an enjoyable hands-on experience of science, so that they will develop a deep and lasting interest and may be motivated to study science further.
Intent.
Our aims in teaching science include the following:
- Preparing our children for life in an increasingly scientific and technological world;
- Fostering concern about, and active care for, our environment;
- Helping our children acquire a growing understanding of scientific ideas;
- Helping develop and extend our children’s scientific concept of their world;
- To enable children to ask and answer questions and to solve problems;
- For children to learn and consolidate the skills of scientific enquiry;
- Developing our children’s understanding of the international and collaborative nature of science.
We endeavour to develop positive attitudes to science by building on children's natural curiosity. We encourage open-mindedness and big questions and create opportunities for children to explore the answers to the problems in a safe environment; through planning investigations children build self-confidence and resilience which enables them to work cooperatively as a group but also independently.
We encourage the use of skills such as observation, problem solving, prediction, hypothesis testing, experimental design, sample technique and data handling. These will run parallel to and complement the increasing factual and theoretical knowledge of the children as they progress through school.
Implementation.
Science is taught as a discrete subject and we facilitate the need for children to develop both their scientific knowledge and skills. To ensure purposeful, inspiring and well-planned lessons, teachers at Newchurch St. Mary's use the Active Learn Science Bug planning scheme, which is adapted appropriately to the ability of the children to suit learning outcomes. We achieve curriculum balance in science by organising activities and planning strategies to encourage investigation and experiments of science in everyday life. The whole school overview ensures that all areas of the science curriculum are taught with clear progression throughout the school, in a variety of ways to ensure all children can access their science learning.
science bug
Impact.
By the end of Key Stage Two, it is our aim that children's knowledge will have developed their knowledge progressively to achieve age related expectations and as a result, they will be equipped to extend their learning into further education. Children will have an understanding of responsibility to not only themselves when using equipment, but also the world in which they live. Newchurch St. Mary's children will have the confidence to apply what they have learned to real life situations. All of which will stimulate scientific enquiry into the nature of their environment in order to continue to learn and develop respect for the world both now and in the future.