Science

At Sedbergh Primary School, it is our intention to provide a high quality science education that provides children with the foundations they need to recognise the importance of Science in every aspects of daily life. We aim to give the teaching and learning of Science high prominence.

Our curriculum will enable children to become enquiry based learners collaborating through researching, investigating and evaluating experiences. It will encourage respect for living organisms and for the physical environment.

Teachers will ensure that all children are exposed to high quality teaching and learning experiences. These will hook the children’s interest, enabling them to develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena. They will be encouraged to ask questions about the world around them and work scientifically to further their conceptual understanding and scientific knowledge.

Children will be encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes. It will provide 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 will be immersed in key scientific vocabulary, which supports in the acquisition of scientific knowledge and understanding.

Sedbergh Primary School selects the best resources and lessons from a range of science schemes, enabling the teachers to fully cover the National curriculum programmes of study for each year group and provide the right balance between working scientifically and learning scientific facts. Learning is progressive and continuous.

Our curriculum is built around the principle of greater learner involvement in their work. It requires deep thinking and encourages learners to work using a question as the starting point, considering different avenues for further research. They do this through exploring, talking about, testing and developing ideas about everyday phenomena and the relationships between living things and familiar environments, and by beginning to develop their ideas about functions, relationships and interactions. We encourage them to ask their own questions about what they observe and make some decisions about which types of scientific enquiry are likely to be the best ways of answering them, including observing changes over time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative and fair tests and finding things out using secondary sources of information. They draw simple conclusions and use scientific language to talk and write about what they have found out.

Teachers check on what children already know and enable them to build on prior knowledge and link ideas together, enabling them to question and become enquiry based learners.

The acquisition of knowledge and skills are supported by the use of ‘sticky vocabulary and sticky knowledge’ resources which are sometimes displayed on science working walls and subject specific knowledge mats. Teachers regularly refer to this knowledge and key vocabulary with meanings so that it ‘sticks’. This enables children to readily apply knowledge and vocabulary to their written, mathematical and verbal communication of skills.

The successful approach to the teaching of science at Sedbergh Primary School will result in a fun, engaging, high quality science education that provides children with the foundations for understanding the world that they can take with them once they complete their primary education.

Assessment at Sedbergh Primary School is teacher based and formed using both summative and formative assessment.

Formative assessment is used as the main tool for assessing the impact of Science at Sedbergh Primary School as it allows for misconceptions and gaps to be addressed more immediately rather than building on insecure scientific foundations. This can be done through less formal means (e.g. discussions, quizzes, concept maps, verbal / written outcomes, reflection tasks / presentations).

Summative assessments are also taken at the end of each unit of work.

At Sedbergh Primary School we aim to foster:

• a love of science work and an interest in further study and work in this field
• the retention of knowledge that is pertinent to Science with a real life context.
• an ability to question ideas and reflect on knowledge.
• an ability to articulate their understanding of scientific concepts and an ability to reason scientifically using rich language linked to science.
• the accurate use of mathematical skills through their work, organisation, recording and interpretation of results.
• The ability to work collaboratively and practically to investigate and experiment.