Science Curriculum Intent:

Our aim for science is that children will be excited by the prospect of exploring and experimenting.  

Nurture: Our aims for science to foster nurture would be to include the following in a range of different lessons:

• Collaboration – experimenting together.
• Resilience – open-ended experiments, evaluating experiments, discussing what happens when they don't work. 
• Communication – team work, explaining the experiment, experiment recording.

Curiosity: Science should promote curiosity through the use of questioning.  What if?  How could I...?  Questions should be open-ended.  A typical unit may include the teacher posing a question and providing resources for them to explore.  The children may be asked 'what would you like to learn?' and then opportunities provided for them to explore this further.

Diversity: During science learning teachers should explore a diverse range of scientists including different genders and races.  To experience fairness, children will be encouraged to assign their own roles within an experiment and look at who is doing what.  Different roles should be shared out each time to ensure everyone gets to explore each option. We would aim to explore scientific careers and different branches of science as well as promoting the importance of girls in STEM.

Ambition: Our aims here are to activate prior learning and then to extend the children from this point.  We would expect risk taking to be a key part of science practical lessons.  The children should be offered new experiences and chances to challenge themselves, exceed their own expectations and realise they can do something that they never thought they could do.  Throughout it all they should be taught to embrace mistakes.

Implementation:

Our Science curriculum is progressive throughout the whole school; 

• Based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage.
• Teaching focuses on enabling children to think as scientists.
• Science provides excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through the investigations, analysing sources and writing extending pieces.
• Classroom environments reflect the topic the children are learning, which then immerse the children in relevant vocabulary as well as visual stimulus for their learning. 

Impact:

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.