At East Hunsbury Primary School, we teach an ambitious, high-quality science curriculum which is carefully constructed to ensure children develop a solid understanding of scientific concepts and knowledge. It has been collaboratively planned by NPAT.
Science is taught through six high-dividend concepts:
- Energy,
- Forces,
- Matter,
- Earth and Space,
- Life and
- Evolution
All of which are woven throughout the curriculum and form the ‘Big ideas’ through which all science is taught.
Knowledge is given a high status and ensures pupils carefully build their understanding of the subject; content is specified in detail and is sequenced in such a way that it is taught to be remembered and not just encountered.
Where appropriate, our science curriculum is taught outside the classroom providing first-hand experiences of the local environment and allowing children to observe science in the real-world and embed their learning of science into meaningful contexts. Additionally, enrichment opportunities further enhance our science curriculum by providing pupils with the opportunity to focus and deepen their scientific learning and extend their educational experiences.
Our curriculum ensures progression of substantive and disciplinary knowledge, building sequentially on prior knowledge in small steps, and incorporates explicit horizontal links across a year group, vertical links where knowledge and understanding are built upon from previous units and diagonal links across the wider curriculum.
Pupils obtain a solid understanding of key scientific concepts and knowledge which enables them to develop and enhance their mental models and use this rich breadth of knowledge to make meaningful links between scientific concepts, the wider curriculum and the real world. Specific science vocabulary is explicitly taught throughout our curriculum and is sequenced to ensure their understanding of scientific vocabulary builds and develops over time.
The science curriculum at East Hunsbury Primary School develops strong subject knowledge amongst staff through the provision of suggested reading material and ensures teachers understand both the prior knowledge pupils will have learnt and their future science learning, focusing staff on the specific knowledge to be taught in a unit. Knowledge organisers are also provided for each unit which outlines the key knowledge and the vocabulary that needs to be explicitly taught in a particular unit of work.
Enquiry and the associated investigative skills are at the core of all science learning. Observing with a scientific eye, predicting, problem-solving, decision-making, communicating, thinking critically and evaluating are common threads which underpin the science learning in our curriculum.
