Science

Our Vision and Principles

: Vision and Principles

What Science looks like at Rothwell St Mary’s

(Please see class pages and Twitter to keep up-to-date with our current Science learning.)

Science Long Term Plan

Science Long Term Plan 2023_34

Intent

Vision

At Rothwell St Mary’s, we believe that all children should gain the substantive knowledge needed to understand the world around them and the disciplinary knowledge needed to engage with, think about, question, investigate, understand and explore our world. In this time of significant scientific change, we want to equip our children with the knowledge and skills that they may need to contribute to making our world a better place.

Implementation

2023_24 Implementation Plan as at Sep 23

Principles

At Rothwell St Mary’s, Science is a core subject in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 and is taught weekly. In Reception, relevant knowledge, understanding and skills are learned through the child-led project work aimed at developing the children’s understanding of the world.

Through our carefully planned and sequenced curriculum, children are provided with the opportunity to develop their natural curiosity through purposeful enquiry which builds on their existing knowledge and understanding from within the Science curriculum and other curriculum areas such as Humanities and Maths. Children are provided with many opportunities to undertake different types of scientific enquiry and develop their working scientifically skills to use equipment, collect, record and analyse data, formulate arguments and explain concepts like a scientist.

Our learning in Science is based on five key principles:

Teaching and learning is research informed and content is taught in a range of ways to best suit the learning intention.
Scientific enquiry is used to develop children’s disciplinary knowledge and strengthen their substantive knowledge as well as to develop an enquiring and curious attitude to the world around them.
Assessment is used within lessons to identify and address misconceptions, across lessons to support children to recall key scientific learning points and termly to monitor progress in working scientifically skills.
Children are active in their learning, they notice, enquire, explore, test ideas and problem-solve using practical hands-on exploration. This supports the development of their working scientifically skills and their resilience.
Children are taught the scientific vocabulary needed to effectively discuss their ideas and to enable them to question and create hypotheses to test and evaluate as scientists.

Knowledge Organisers

Progression of substantive and disciplinary knowledge as well as key vocabulary is mapped on the Science Long Term Plan. Teachers use Knowledge Organisers to support them in implementing the progression and families may want to use these with their children at home to further support their learning.

Science KOs Y1 Science KOs Y2 Science KOs Y3 Science KOs Y4 Science KOs Y5 Science KOs Y6