Intent

At Higham, we recognise the importance of science in every aspect of daily life and it is our intention to develop in our pupils a lifelong curiosity in the subject.

At Higham, in conjunction with the aims of the National Curriculum, our science teaching offers opportunities for the children to:

• Develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
• Develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
• Be equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.

Our curriculum is planned so that pupils progressively build on learnt scientific knowledge and skills. Pupils regularly have the opportunity to apply skills with increased independence, raising questions and recognising ways in which they might answer them. We want pupils to be able to work scientifically; planning enquires, identifying variables, take measurements, record data and results, make predictions and comparative and fair tests, report finding from enquires and identify scientific evidence. As children progress through the school, it is our aim to ensure that they understand and build upon key scientific knowledge and concepts and increase their technical vocabulary.

Implementation

Teachers at Higham create a positive attitude to science learning within their classrooms and reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in science.  

Our curriculum is structured into carefully planned units of work, which enable children to learn and retain important and useful knowledge relating to the unit as well as developing their scientific enquiry skills. These are developed with increasing depth and challenge as children move through the year groups. Within a unit of work, children will carry out investigations and hands-on activities, be encouraged to ask their own questions and be given opportunities to use scientific skills and research to discover the answers. Each lesson has a clear focus and the sequence of lessons helps to embed scientific knowledge and skills, with each lesson building on previous learning. There is also an opportunity to recap concepts and vocabulary where necessary and to regularly review and evaluate children’s understanding. Lessons are well resourced and teachers demonstrate how to use equipment safely and the various working scientifically skills in order to embed scientific understanding. Opportunities are also provided to develop children’s understanding of their surrounding by access to our well maintained outdoor learning environment.

In the Early Years, science is taught through the children learning about the world around them in their learning through play.  Additional opportunities are provided in Science, such as an after school Science club and educational visits linked to the curriculum, such as visits to Horton Kirby Education centre.

Impact

Our teaching of science at Higham results in a fun, engaging, high-quality science education, that provides children with the foundations for understanding the world.  Children’s work shows, a range of evidence of the curriculum coverage for all scientific topics and there is clear progression of children’s work and development of skills. Children are encouraged to become increasingly independent in science, selecting their own equipment and materials, completing pupil led investigations and choosing their own strategies for recording.   Progress is measured through a child’s ability to know more, remember more and explain more and this can be assessed in different ways. Teachers build into the lessons precise questioning to assess conceptual knowledge and skills, give feedback with next step questions to push learning on and long-term attainment and progress is recorded using our assessment spreadsheets. The importance of science will be recognised across the school, through our learning environment and with science technical vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners. Children who feel confident in their science knowledge and enquiry skills will be excited about science, show that they are curious to learn more and will see the relevance of what they learn in lessons to real-life situations and understand the importance of science in the real world.

Our engagement with the local environment ensures that children learn through varied and first hand experiences of the world around them.   There is a clear progression of children’s work and development of their skills.  Children’s work shows a range of topic and evidence of the curriculum coverage for all the science topics.  Feedback from the teachers has impact on our pupils, often with next step questions to push learning on.