Science
Wherever you look, whatever you do and wherever you go, science is all around us. Human nature is to be curious about the world we live in and children enjoy being curious and inquisitive. From an early age, children ask the question ‘Why?’ As parents and teachers, we may not always have the answers to these questions but it can be fun trying to find out and make sense of what is happening all around us.
What does the National Curriculum say about Science?
Children at our school will have the opportunity to:
- develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
- develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
- be equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.
How do we teach Science in School?
- At Hetton Lyons, Science lessons are planned with a set of principles in mind. As a school, we designed and created a set of principles which act as our vision for Science.
- We teach Science through the use of models to support deeper understanding. There are four models and they are ‘The Particle Model’, ‘The Force Arrow Model’, ‘The Energy Transfer Model’ and ‘The Big Picture Model’. A ‘science model’ is an abstract conceptual idea that is taken to its simplest form. These then become the starting point and the basis of pupil understanding and responses as they study a topic. They are then built upon, Key Stage by Key Stage, to provide an appropriate level of depth for the required expectation.
- Within each Science lesson, ‘Working Scientifically’ is always taught through and clearly related to the teaching of substantive science content. We are able to to this by focusing on two learning objectives each lesson. One learning objective focuses on a particular skill and the other learning objective focuses on the knowledge and understanding that the children are expected to know.
- Within our science lessons, children develop the understanding of methods of science through different types of scientific enquiry. The types of enquiry we develop are:
- Exploring and Observing
- Asking questions
- Researching and Communication
- Classifying
- Identifying patterns
- Observing over time
- Surveys
- Comparative testing
- Fair Testing
- Children have the opportunity to learn about scientists and to understand how their findings have impacted on the real world.
- Maths is linked closely to our Science curriculum. Children are able to develop their skills of collecting, recording and interpreting data as well as constructing tables and graphs.
- Children are taught to use technical terminology accurately and precisely. By the end of Key Stage 2, the children have an extended specialist vocabulary that they can use across the curriculum.
- We use a digital tool called, ‘Explorify’ to develop essential transferable skills and to also develop the skills of observation, questioning and creative thinking. We use this tool as support at the beginning, middle and end of a topic.
What skills are covered during lessons?
Scientific enquiry is the area that the children seem to enjoy most. Discovering things for themselves, rather than being told, is a great way to learn in a meaningful way. It’s not always finding out why things work but also learning from why things don’t work.
Within each year group, we aim to develop five skills:
- Explaining Science
- Classification
- Designing Experiments
- Data, Tables and Graphs
- Making Conclusions
How is progression achieved?
We have a long term plan that details the progression expected across the year groups. This enables pupils to develop scientific thinking, knowledge and skills in a structured way. As your child progresses through school, they need to be able to use progressively more challenging skills to tackle the scientific problems they encounter. This long term plan allows us to ensure children make progress, are supported well and are challenged
We have all worked extremely hard to achieve our Primary Science Quality Mark.
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