Intent

At St Wilfrid’s Catholic Primary School, it is our endeavour to provide a high quality science education that provides children with the foundations they need to recognise the importance of science in every aspect of daily life. We want our children to appreciate how scientists and science have changed the lives of human beings and know that it is vital to the world’s future prosperity. We understand the future opportunities that a high quality science education can provide for our pupils and ensure all pupils are taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science across the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.  Through building up a body of substantive and disciplinary knowledge and concepts, pupils are encouraged to develop both scientific knowledge and understanding alongside working scientifically skills.  We aim to support children to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena developing a sense of awe and wonder at what the physical world has to offer.

Implementation

Our curriculum is centred around the ‘Primary Science’ scheme of work which provides an innovative progression framework, covering the National Curriculum, where scientific content including knowledge, skills and vocabulary are broken down into steps allowing pupils to embed prior knowledge.

Children are taught to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes. Our curriculum also encourages children to become enquiry-based learners, collaborating through researching, investigating and evaluating experiences. Each unit provides opportunities for the critical evaluation of evidence and rational explanation of scientific phenomena as well as opportunity to apply their mathematical knowledge to their understanding of science, including collecting, presenting and analysing data. Children are immersed in key scientific vocabulary, which supports in the acquisition of scientific knowledge and understanding.  The following types of scientific enquiries are woven throughout our curriculum: Problem Solving, Pattern Seeking, Comparative/Fair Testing, Research, Observation Over Time and Identifying, Grouping and Classifying to ensure that children are gaining a full breadth of opportunities to engage in learning as scientists. All aspects of ‘Working Scientifically’ from the National Curriculum are interwoven throughout our curriculum, again, to ensure that children understand what it means to be a successful scientist. 

Structured lesson plans, accessible resources and ongoing assessments enable staff to be confident on the progression of skills, knowledge, ensuring high quality outcomes are met, and core vocabulary is embedded.  Support through a comprehensive schema of ‘10 big ideas’, which allow children to connect new knowledge with prior knowledge and commit this to long-term memory.

Impact

Our approach to the teaching of science at St Wilfrid’s will result in a fun, engaging, high quality science education, that provides children with the foundations for understanding the world that they live in and a sense of scientific phenomenon.  Children will demonstrate a love of science; understand the core role it plays in understanding the World and show an interest in further study and fieldwork.  They will be able to retain knowledge that is pertinent to Science within a real life context be keen to ask questions, investigate things for themselves and draw conclusions about their findings; reflecting on the significance of these and how where relevant, these can be shared using rich vocabulary.  Pupils will confidently transfer their knowledge and skills across areas of the curriculum and use these to further support their understanding.

Pupils will showcase their learning in a variety of ways with evidence being collected through learning experiences or outdoor learning and being evidenced within science books, which will best showcase the impact of our curriculum.  We look for positive impact through observing learning regularly, pupil interviews and completing book looks.  Pupils knowledge and skills be assessed regularly for misconceptions and gaps through formative assessment within lessons to ensure firm scientific foundations are laid.  Attainment and progress of our Science curriculum is measured through outcomes and the record of coverage through our curriculum knowledge and skills grids.