Intent

At Dagnall we want to inspire our children to become curious, inquisitive and analytical thinkers with a broad understanding of the natural world. We want our children to develop the confidence to ask questions, make observations, carry out investigations, record data in a variety of ways and analyse and present their findings.

We want our children to see how science is part of every aspect of their life. The hope is to encourage pupils to become reflective, responsible individuals who use scientific knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and contribute positively to the world around them.

Implementation

We use Kapow to support our scientific teaching, based on the National curriculum, the following three strands have been identified, which run throughout our Science curriculum:

• Scientific knowledge and understanding.
• Working scientifically.
• Science in action.

The Science curriculum has been planned with these strands running through each unit, ensuring balanced coverage of the different areas of Science and both substantive and disciplinary knowledge.

Each lesson begins with a short activity revisiting prior learning. This helps reinforce key knowledge, activate long-term memory and create connections between past and new learning. The core part of the lesson is where children engage in activities that develop their understanding of the learning objective. This might include a mixture of teacher modelling, guided practice and independent or collaborative tasks tailored to support all children to access the learning.

Impact

The impact of our science curriculum can be seen by our children retaining knowledge that gives them the foundations for understanding the world. Our children are able to question ideas, reflect upon knowledge and gain resilience when outcomes challenge their ideas.

Our children work collaboratively to investigate and experiment, generating their own ideas for investigation where appropriate. Our children are able to articulate their knowledge with confidence and to suggest improvements to their own work.