Science

Cultural Capital

We actively seek opportunities for pupils to enhance their science capital. This is achieved by enabling pupils to contextualise their learning within the real world. Some examples include:

Regular visits to our school allotment
STEM days
Linking to careers that involve science, such as the RAF
Animal encounters/zoo visits
STEM club provision, supported by STEM ambassadors
Theatre visit to learn about significant female scientist throughout history.

Intent

At Belgrave, our intent is to ensure that:

all pupils develop a scientific knowledge of biology (life), chemistry (matter) and physics (energy).
learners use different enquiry skills and enquiry types to answer questions about the world.
pupils apply their scientific knowledge to understand why science is important today and for the future.

Enquiry Curriculum

Our science curriculum is based on the three main disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. At the centre of our provision are nine ‘big questions’, 3 for each discipline. Each year groups’ topics provide a sequential, progressive approach to enable pupils to answer these ‘big questions’ and therefore enhance their understanding of the world around them. Hugh quality retrieval tasks check understanding throughout a topic, and an end of unit assessment ensures that pupils have knowledge required for future learning.

Long Term Plan

Cross Curricular Links

The skills and knowledge the children use in Science complement those in the rest of the curriculum. These are just some of the ways that Science links to other areas of their study:

COMPUTING

1:1 iPads are used to support all learning in science. Children using a variety of Apps, such as Arduino to capture and present their scientific thinking.

GEOGRAPHY

Direct links are made to geography regarding sustainability and our role as global citizens.

HISTORY

Significant scientists, and the impact of they have had on the development of our understanding in science, are studied throughout our curriculum.

MATHS

Statistical tools learnt in maths are applied in science, as well applying their understanding of measure and number.

PE

Pupils learn about the importance of staying healthy and the effect that exercise has on our bodies.

READING

At least one science text is studied in depth within each year group. This is further enhanced by science texts used in whole class reading and those that pupils have access to within class libraries.

WRITING

Children produce two pieces of extended writing in English lessons based on the text they have studied.

Enquiry Skills

All children at Belgrave carry out scientific enquiry. At Belgrave we use TAPS (Teacher Assessment in Primary Science) to support with the teaching and assessing of the enquiry skills. This enables pupils to know how to carry out enquiries to enable them to find out about the world around them. This is supported further with the science enquiry skills wheel, which is shared with learners at the beginning of each lesson and is present on all science working walls.

Skills Wheel