Intent:

Science teaching at Pyrcroft Grange Primary School aims to provide children with a strong understanding of the world around them whilst also developing the specific skills and knowledge to help children to work scientifically. We aim to encourage the children to develop an awareness of further scientific concepts and processes and the implications of Science within the wider world, both today and in the future.

In order to help the children, become scientifically literate individuals, at Pyrcroft Grange we explicitly teach the working scientifically skills alongside the scientific knowledge of each key area within the curriculum. Scientific enquiry skills are embedded within each lesson and topic area to encourage children to be involved in the observing, planning and recording of investigation work and to take responsibility for their own learning outcomes.

At Pyrcroft Grange we recognise the importance of cross-curricular learning and want the children to be aware of the scientific enquiry skills required within each topic area and how they can relate to other key areas of the science curriculum. These focus areas and topics are recapped as the children move up through the school, and topics such as plants taught in Key Stage One are taught and revisited again in further detail as the children move up into Key Stage Two, promoting sustained knowledge and enthusiasm for learning. Children are guided to make cross-curricular links with their learning and alongside our vocabulary learning, specialist scientific vocabulary is taught for each topic area to ensure that children are secure in their understanding and are able to communicate their scientific thinking with confidence.

Implementation:

Teachers are encouraged and supported to develop their subject knowledge and their planning, teaching and assessing of the working scientifically skills through teacher training sessions. The school has recently built strong links with a Regional Mentor from the Primary Science Teaching Trust who has supported us with raising the profile of science within the school, providing children with enriching opportunities and enhancing the delivery of our curriculum. As part of the planning and teaching process, our teachers are required to:

• Plan and deliver a cycle of lessons for each topic area, which carefully plans for progression and depth.
• Access online resources, including free platforms such as Explorify, which aim to help develop children’s scientific curiosity.
• Plan and explicitly teach a focused working scientifically skill each half term, using teacher judgements to assess children’s outcomes.
• Provide parents with regular feedback on children’s progress and next steps within their science learning each term using the school’s snapshot report model.
• Engage children through ‘big thinking’ challenge questions to allow them to develop and apply their enquiry skills, encouraging them to question the world around them whilst exploring possible answers for their scientific based questions.
• Outline key vocabulary and knowledge for scientific learning outcomes within each topic on the school curriculum maps. The curriculum maps are important as they are evidence that a broad and balanced curriculum is being offered to children.
• Engage children with trips and visits from experts who will enhance the learning experience.

Impact:

Our high quality science curriculum is well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression of both the knowledge and skills required to work scientifically. Lessons are differentiated to allow for all the children in our school to access the curriculum, enabling them to make good or better progress.  In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes to track where children are on their individual learning journeys (Pupil asset)
• A celebration of learning during our school science week, demonstrating progressing across the school.
• Tracking of knowledge through observations of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Children are able to articulate their thinking using high quality scientific vocabulary
• Children are able to use their scientific enquiry skills to approach investigations as they continue to grow on their scientific learning journey.