Intent

Through the promotion of curiosity and inquisitive thinking, we want our children to develop a passion and love for science. Our aim is to showcase the importance of science in everyday life and the links to learning in other subjects. We ensure that our children are provided with practical learning experiences that create opportunities to build upon the skills of working scientifically and encourage children to collaborate, reason and communicate their ideas using specific scientific vocabulary. Our children are inspired by real life scientists that visit our school and develop an understanding of how science relates to the wider world and potential future careers.

Implementation

Lessons focus upon enquiry based skills to ensure that children are confident in:

• asking questions
• making predictions
• setting up tests
• observing and measuring
• recording data
• interpreting and communicating results
• evaluating

EYFS and Key Stage 1

In Reception and Key Stage 1, we aim to provide the children with opportunities to experience and observe, looking closely at the world around them. They are encouraged to be curious and ask questions about what they notice. We help them to develop their understanding of scientific ideas by using different types of scientific enquiry to answer their own questions, including observing changes over time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying, carrying out simple comparative tests and using secondary sources to find out information. Where possible, the learning takes place through the use of practical experiences.

Key Stage 2

In Lower Key Stage 2, the focus is to enable pupils to broaden their scientific view of the word around them. We achieve this through exploration, discussion, testing, developing ideas about everyday phenomena and the relationships between living things and familiar environments. The children ask questions about what they observe and make some decisions about which type of enquiry is likely to be the best way to proceed.

Upper Key Stage 2 builds upon this, enabling the pupils to develop a deeper understanding of a wide range of scientific ideas. They learn to investigate more systematically and draw more meaningful conclusions based on their data and observations, using evidence to justify ideas and scientific knowledge to explain their findings.