Science

At Broad Oak we strive to create opportunities for our pupils to build their scientific knowledge through real life, hands-on experiences. We follow a topic based, creative curriculum that allows the pupils to explore their ideas and curiosities by actively engaging in scientific tasks. We use our local environment to ensure that learning is relevant to the pupils and makes sense to their current lives. We aim to provide our pupils with the tools to become independent scientific investigators, and encourage them to ask their own questions about tasks they are undertaking in order to gain a deeper knowledge and understanding about the world they live in.

Have a look at our topic letters to see what we are doing in Science this term.

Intent

To continually develop pupils’ interest and enjoyment of, science. By building on children’s curiosity, the science curriculum will help to instil a positive attitude towards science in pupils.
To deliver all the requirements of the national curriculum in relation to science and covering major scientific concepts.
To ensure all science lessons are purposeful, accurate and imaginative.
To ensure pupils have sufficient scientific knowledge to understand both the uses and implications of science in our world, today and in the future. This will also give pupils an appreciation of the changing nature of scientific knowledge.
To develop pupils’ ability to compose thoughtful questions, investigate these using the correct techniques, accurately record their findings using appropriate scientific language and analyse their results.
To help pupils develop the skills of prediction, hypothesising, experimentation, investigation, observation, measurement, interpretation and communication.
To make pupils aware of and alert to links between science and other school subjects, as well as their lives more generally.

Implementation

Our Science curriculum will be moving to ‘Big Questions’ which links to the national curriculum. Each class will have a set of big questions which they work on throughout the year.

We believe that children need to be given opportunities to learn from one another and to take part in group/ partner work when appropriate but to also have the confidence to work independently when needed

Pupils are taught to understand and use correct scientific vocabulary based on the objectives and skills being taught.

Practical ‘hands on’ learning is at the core of our science teaching and learning. Our lessons will allow for a wide range of scientific enquiry, including the following:

Pattern seeking
Observation over time
Classifying and grouping
Undertaking comparative and fair testing
Researching using secondary sources.

We encourage and embrace opportunities for outdoor learning wherever possible and different year groups will have the opportunity to undertake either an external educational visit, which is science based or some expertly delivered in-house workshops through the year.

Developing skills such as questioning, observing, gathering and recording data, and drawing conclusions are key to excellent science teaching and learning at our school.

Impact

Through our Science teaching and learning, pupils should be able to recall knowledge, use scientific vocabulary and develop scientific skills.

A detailed document showing progression of skills for each year group can be found here.