Science

Science at Cam Woodfield Junior School

Intent

Our Science curriculum is designed to inspire and encourage children to develop a sense of enquiry and curiosity of the world by encouraging them to take an active role in their learning, through questioning and planning investigations. We aim to provide them with a secure understanding of the world around them through acquiring specific skills and knowledge to help them to: think scientifically; learn about famous scientists and their theories and have an understanding of scientific processes. We also aim to help all children develop a deeper respect, appreciation and care for the natural world and its phenomena.

Through practical and first hand experiences, we ensure that all children develop their knowledge of the science contained within the programmes of study of the National Curriculum. Units of work are taught in accordance to the National Curriculum year group objectives, and a scientific overview for each year group is followed to ensure that all units are taught in a progressive structure, and there are opportunities to revisit key units in later year groups. This allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and enjoyment of a topic. Specific Scientific vocabulary is embedded into the lessons and are progressive throughout the year groups to help the children to learn a bank of words that they can apply to their understanding of a concept. Teachers provide children with a frontispiece for each unit that displays the unit’s key vocabulary, to give children a central place to retrieve this vocabulary from and help them apply it into their written work.

At Cam Woodfield Junior School, working scientifically skills are an integral part of the Science curriculum that are embedded into each unit the children study and these skills are revisited and developed each year to ensure progression. We ensure the pupils are taught the skills required to independently complete each stage of an investigation, as well as understanding and planning for the different investigation types. This supports children to independently plan, predict and analyse their own experiments and investigations. This further helps pupils to gain a greater understanding of the concepts and knowledge that they are learning in Science.

Implementation

At Cam Woodfield Junior School, Science is taught consistently every week. Teachers are required to use the curriculum overview objectives to inform their planning, as well as ensuring that they have included at least one opportunity for an investigation per unit. When planning an investigation, teachers need to follow the investigation cycle by selecting an investigation type, which suits the unit focus, and a skill to focus on when planning and carrying out the investigation. As a school, we use the acronym of PARE (plan, act, results and evaluate) for the skills required to carry out an investigation. Teachers might focus on one or two aspects of PARE per science unit, to delve deeper into the investigation skill to instil a deeper understanding and higher level of confidence within the children.

In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in science at Cam Woodfield Junior School, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school, that provides opportunities for all children as well as promoting Science within the school and wider community. These include:

 Adapting lessons to match all pupils’ needs to ensure they achieve and are challenged in their Science learning, as well as using a range of activities and ways to record their understanding.

 Where possible, Science is linked to year group themes to help children link their Scientific learning to real life applications.

 Teachers plan to suit their children’s interests, current events, their own teaching style, the use of any support staff and the resources available.

 Trips and visits from external providers and link schools are actively encouraged, as well as the annual celebration of British Science Week to further promote Science within the school.

 Children have opportunities to be actively involved in promoting Science within the school. This is enabled by having two science ambassadors per year group, who regularly participate in pupil voice for science and award a termly ‘scientist of the term’ to a child in their class. This award is decided by, and written by the science ambassadors to give them a sense of ownership.

 Making cross-curricular links between Science and other subjects.

 Opportunities for learning Science concepts in other lessons are also planned for where possible.

External providers further support the implementation of the school’s policy. In particular, we are continuing to establish links with the local secondary schools to support the school by providing resources, assemblies, trips to use their laboratories and events. These providers include:

 Rednock Secondary School Science department

 KLB School Science Department

 Marling School Science department

 Science Education Group

Impact

Science teaching at Cam Woodfield Junior school is planned carefully to effectively demonstrate progression in learning and help children foster an inquisitive and considerate mind towards their world. If children are secure in the objectives within their year group, they are considered to be working at age related expectations. We assess and monitor the children’s understanding through our school online data system, Insight, where the children’s understanding of a learning objective is RAG rated. Within our school, we use end of unit outcomes to judge the children’s understanding of learning and whether they have retained the information taught.

ASE exemplifications of ARE in Science are also used to help teachers to form their judgements when assessing work produced.

The impact and measure of Science is to ensure children not only acquire the appropriate age related knowledge linked to the Science curriculum, but also skills which equip them to progress from their starting points, and within their everyday lives.

All children will have:

• A wider variety of skills linked to both scientific knowledge and understanding, and scientific enquiry/investigative skills.

• Demonstrate that they have built upon prior learning and they can apply their understanding to a range of contexts within Science and real life applications.

• A richer vocabulary, which will enable to articulate their understanding of taught concepts and actively take part in discussions.

• High aspirations and a sense of enquiry where children are posing questions to investigate and discuss.

• A secure understanding of the world in which they live in.

• Demonstrate that they have a secure understanding of the working scientifically skills to work independently to plan and carry out each stage and type of investigation.

• An appreciation and care for their natural world.

In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

 An analysis of the objectives achieved and the percentage of children achieving ARE within their year group

 Moderation events within the school to demonstrate the progression across the year groups

 Pupil discussions and conferencing about their learning and Science within the school

 Tracking and analysis of end of unit outcome assessments