Intent: This is what we want for your child.
At Barley Fields Primary, we recognise the importance of Science in every aspect of daily life and acknowledge its importance in many careers of the future. We are proud to have designed a high quality, bespoke Science curriculum that provides children with the foundations they need to understand how things happen and why things work. We aim to instil a love of Science and aim to deliver fun and stimulating science lessons that nurture children’s natural curiosity and encourage respect for living organisms and the physical environment. Enquiry is at the centre of our teaching and we acknowledge that if we are to create the scientists of the future our children need to develop scientific skills alongside knowledge acquisition and children are encouraged to make observations, plan and complete investigations as they progress through school. We offer a hands-on, enquiry-based curriculum that allows children to progressively develop the skills associated with Science as a process of enquiry including promoting questioning, challenging ideas, working practically, investigating, evaluating, making choices and using scientific vocabulary.
Through our curriculum we intend for children to develop an understanding of how important and relevant Science is in their lives, both now and in the future and utilise a range of Careers Days, Science Days and STEM activities to promote this.
By the end of their time in primary school we want our children to have a wealth of scientific knowledge and understanding. To understand what it means to work scientifically, to understand a range of concepts and be able to articulate why they things happen and how things work.
Implementation: How will this look in the classroom.
At Barley Fields Primary our approach to teaching Science begins in Early Years with an exploration of the natural world when children explore and investigate the world around them, explore how living things grow and develop and investigate how things change and work. This prepares children for learning in KS1 and 2 when the curriculum gradually builds on common themes and scientific concepts.
Our children follow a carefully structured Science curriculum designed to ensure children know more, do more and remember more as they progress through school. Our curriculum is built around concepts within three strands of learning which are revisited as children progress through school:
- Biology – Animals including humans, Plants, Living things and their Habitats, Seasonal Change, Evolution and Inheritance
- Chemistry – Materials, Rocks, Fossils and Soil,
- Physics – Forces, Electricity, Magnetism, Light, sound, Earth and Space
Scientific enquiry skills are embedded into each science topic and these are enhanced, revisited and developed throughout their time in school. These follow three areas of investigational skill planning, doing, recording and explaining. Our teaching approach allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and increase their enthusiasm for Science whilst embedding prior knowledge into the long-term memory.
Science is taught in blocks of lessons to ensure children have opportunities for a sustained period of study and have time to embed and enhance their learning. The school follows a bespoke science scheme of learning designed using content from the National Curriculum and supported with the White Rose Science Scheme. This approach has been selected because it utilises content created by subject experts and is based on the latest pedagogical research however we have adapted it to suit the needs of our children.
Our scheme of learning for Science supports teaching, ensures continuity and carefully plans for progression and depth. It is underpinned by the appropriate teaching pedagogy for quality first teaching in science and ensures children’s learning is practical and hands on. Specialist vocabulary linked to our Science topics is taught and built up, and effective questioning encouraged. Concepts are reinforced by focusing on the key features of scientific enquiry, so that children learn to use a variety of approaches to answer relevant scientific questions.
We are proud to offer a science curriculum that is current and research informed. As such, it is regularly adapted to meet the needs of all learners and reviewed in response to best practice. We have worked with the EEF and the National College ob adaptive teaching in the classroom which underpins all our teaching practice and pedagogy.
Our curriculum characters have been designed to represent the curriculum end points as children progress through school. Our children are regularly exposed to the core skills and knowledge needed to develop as a scientist with the use of the school curriculum character – Simon the Scientist. This character is regularly used to encourage children to reflect on the key skills and concept areas of Science.
Full details of our curriculum long term schemes of learning and curriculum pathways can be downloaded below.
Impact: This is what it will mean for our children.
The successful approach to the teaching of science at Barley Fields results in a fun, engaging, high quality science learning journey, that provides children with the foundations for understanding the world in which they live and ensures our children have the knowledge and skills that they need once they complete their primary education.
Our science curriculum and our teaching and learning pedagogy leads to children who:
- demonstrate a love of science work and an interest in further study
- retain knowledge that is pertinent to Science with a real life context.
- be able to question ideas and reflect on knowledge.
- be able to articulate their understanding of scientific concepts and be able to reason scientifically using rich language linked to science.
- demonstrate a high love of mathematical skills through their work, organising, recording and interpreting results.
- work collaboratively and practically to investigate and experiment.
We are very proud of our children’s attainment and progress in science across the primary phase. We continually observe and formatively assess children against curriculum end points using SONAR and use this information to plan their next steps in their learning and to challenge and consolidate their skills. By the end of each year, children are expected to know, apply and understand the learning specified in the science curriculum plans.
In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- A celebration of learning which demonstrates progression across the school (Curriculum Floor book);
- Pupil discussions about their learning (Pupil Voice);
- Internal monitoring strategies by SLT and the Science Team
Our children leave school equipped with a range of scientific knowledge and skill. They enjoy Scientific learning and activity and we are confident that it will support their learning in the future. They can apply a range of skills and knowledge to forward explanations of how and why things happen and have enjoyed discovering things for themselves.