Intent

At St Andrew the Apostle Catholic Primary School, our intent is to develop our children as scientists by equipping them with the scientific skills required to understand the world around them. By providing all children with an engaging, high-quality Science education, we aim to give each child the opportunity to build on their natural sense of curiosity, therefore developing their excitement and enthusiasm towards Science, in turn developing their learning and resulting in acquisition of knowledge. We aim to provide the children with key opportunities to work scientifically, to explore and to develop their understanding of scientific enquiry, embedding these skills within each year group, inclusive of biology, chemistry and physics content. We encourage our children to be independent learners.

Implementation

We implement our curriculum by teaching a clear and comprehensive scheme In line with national curriculum ensuring that we incorporate many practical investigations allowing for progression of key skills to be displayed across all key stages. Children are able to build on prior knowledge and skills whilst linking ideas together, enabling them to question and become enquiry based learners. Where possible, we make cross curricular links through taught topics or using our English reading scheme, Power of Reading. We link PSHE and British Values, allowing children to revisit the importance of our world and how it should be treated. Our knowledge organisers allow for children to have access to key vocabulary and meaning in order to understand and readily apply to their written and verbal explanations.

Impact

The impact of our Science curriculum is measured at the end of each taught topic, at the end of each half term using a range of techniques: on-going teacher assessments, monitoring of individual books and floor books, lesson observations, learning walks and pupil voice.

Our ultimate goal in Science is for children to be able to retain scientific knowledge and skills allowing them to scientifically question and explain ideas and knowledge in real life context.