Science at Corbridge First
At Corbridge First, our provision is designed to develop a lifelong curiosity and interest in the sciences in all young learners. We aim to develop pupils natural excitement and inspire them to explore their scientific enquiry now and throughout their life.
When planning for the science curriculum, we intend for pupils to have as many opportunities as possible to learn through a variety of scientific investigations. This will help equip them with with the tools to find out more about the world in which they live, helping them to be active scientists.
As pupils progress through school, they will build upon and deepen their skills in working scientifically, scientific knowledge and become more competent and familiar in planning and carrying out fair and comparative tests. Pupils will learn how to make predictions, ask questions, investigate and explain through their scientific study.
When designing our curriculum, we have sought to focus on 3 main areas:
- Knowledge: What do we want our children to learn and remember? How should we sequence the learning in order to ensure progression? Develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
- Concepts: Develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of Science through different types of science enquiries. We have planned units to embed and cover each area of the national curriculum.
- Skills: How will we teach our children to become effective participants of the world? What skills do they need to learn to understand the content? Develop the essential scientific enquiry skills to deepen their knowledge and engage in life-long science.
To help our pupils to be successful knowledgeable learners lessons will be contextualised to make them purposeful, helping make sure that the pupils understand the relevance of the curriculum and how it can explain and impact the world around them. Pupils are learning that the concepts and ideas within science are continually evolving as a result of new research, and where possible we explore how theories have continued to be developed throughout time by different scientists.
Our science curriculum is based on the National Curriculum, where teachers use a wide range of resources to help guide their medium term and short term planning, including White Rose Science, The Ogden Trust, Explorify and Twig Reporters.
Knowledge organisers in books at the beginning of each new topic, allow children to access specific vocabulary they will need, see they key learning as well as what they already know and what working scientifically skills will be explored.
Science learning begins in the Early Years where children begin to discover, explore and develop their curiosity about the world around them. Within both Nursery and Reception, topics will link to relevant areas of Understanding the World within Development Matters.
They will be encouraged to make observations, predictions and test out their ideas practically which will help to build the initial foundation of understanding of which they will continue to develop in later years.
In Key Stage 1, children observe, explore and ask questions about living things, materials and physical phenomena. They will begin to work together to collect evidence to help them answer questions and link this to simple scientific ideas. They are exposed to the five different types of scientific enquiry within lessons, beginning to evaluate evidence and carry out comparative and fair tests; starting to use reference materials to research more about scientific ideas. Children will engage in completing evaluations over time; identifying, classifying and grouping. They will share ideas and communicate them using a developing scientific vocabulary, drawings, simple tables and charts.
Within Key Stage 2, children build upon their prior understanding of living things, materials and physical phenomena. They make links between ideas and use simple models and theories to express this. They carry out more systematic investigations working on their own and with others through a deeper exploration of scientific enquiry. They not only ask their own questions, but begin to plan how to answer them through carrying out an investigation. Through high quality discussion and modelling, they build upon their oracy techniques.