Please see detailed information about our Science curriculum.  If anyone has any further questions regarding the curriculum please contact Mrs N Kearney (Headteacher).

                  Science                

At Legh Vale Primary School, we understand the need for all pupils to develop their scientific knowledge, understanding and skills, as an essential component of all subjects and as a subject in its own right. Our school syllabus is broad and balanced and helps to support pupils’ work across the curriculum and prepares them for life in an ever-changing world.

Intent

At Legh Vale Primary School, we believe that a high-quality science education provides the foundation for understanding our world through the specific disciplines: biology, chemistry and physics. Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity and all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes, concepts and applications of science. We strive to promote, develop and maintain a sense of curiosity and excitement about natural phenomena and encourage our pupils to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, analyse causes and ask questions about their world around them.

Staff at our school ensure that all children are exposed to and engage with high-quality teaching and learning experiences: in our classrooms; by inviting in specialised professionals; visiting scientific points of interest; and established links with local secondary schools. We immerse our children in scientific vocabulary, providing them with the transferrable tools to shape their new understandings. We intend to provide these to all children regardless of their ethnic origin, gender, aptitude or any disability, through a broad and balanced curriculum.

Implementation

By ensuring consistently high standards of teaching and learning in science, we implement a curriculum that promotes progression in skills and knowledge throughout the school.

Planning for science is a process in which all teachers are involved to ensure that the school provides comprehensive coverage of the ‘National curriculum in England: science programmes of study 2014’ and ‘Understanding of the World in the Early Years Foundation Stage’. Our planning involves adapting and extending the curriculum to match all pupils’ needs. Where possible, science is linked to class topics to enable cross-curricular teaching opportunities. Staff are free to teach science units in a way that they feel suits their pupils’ needs: both discrete sessions and full blocks of ‘topic time’ are dedicated to science across the school.

We ensure that all children are provided with rich learning experiences that aim to:

• Prepare our children for life in an increasingly scientific and technological world today and in the future.
• Help our children acquire a growing understanding of the nature, processes and methods of scientific ideas.
• Help pupils to develop and extend their scientific concept of their world.
• Build on our children’s natural curiosity and support them to develop scientific approaches to problems.
• Promote our school values.
• Develop working scientifically skills: observation, measuring, predicting, hypothesising, experimenting, communicating, interpreting, explaining, analysing and evaluating.
• Develop the use of scientific language, recording and techniques.
• Develop the use of computing in investigation and recording.
• Create links between science and other subjects.

Impact

The impact and measure of this is to ensure our children not only acquire the appropriate age-related knowledge linked to the science curriculum, but also skills which will equip them to progress from their starting points and within their everyday lives.

All children will have:

• A wider variety of skills linked to both scientific knowledge and understanding, and scientific enquiry/investigative skills.
• A richer vocabulary which will enable them to articulate their understanding of taught concepts.
• High aspirations, which will see them through to further study, work and a successful adult life.