Science

Intent

At Churchfield, we want to develop future scientists and critical thinkers. We want our learners to be curious about the world around them and confidently explore this so that they can develop their understanding. Children at Churchfield will develop their understanding of how major scientific ideas and events have played vital roles and shaped society. We aim to build a Science capital for all children, regardless of their background and starting point so that they are inspired to continue to use Science in their everyday life, future educations and careers. We want children to experience the wonder of the scientific world and be excited about what they discover for themselves.  

Implementation

In EYFS children explore scientific concepts, through predominantly the following areas of learning: Communication and Language, Personal Social and Emotional Development, Understanding the world. Science is taught in key stage groups (KS1, LKS2 & UKS2) on a two year rolling program, taking into account the mixed year groups and the coverage of the National Curriculum for Science.

The Science topic units, for each half term, are well-planned and sequenced sessions that encourage questioning, practical experience and build on prior knowledge and understanding. Progression can be seen between year groups and topics. Each topic unit allows children to develop their working scientifically skills and throughout the year develop and practice their scientific inquiry skills. Throughout Churchfield, inquiry is often child led, answering our own questions using one of the inquiry types. Science at Churchfield often makes use of the resources available to us and the local environment, allowing children to develop their scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding. It is important to us that children are able to articulate their learning and use scientific language to describe their findings and as such we ensure that this language is on display and use of it is modelled to the children.

Impact

The impact of Science at Churchfield will be that children will have developed a love for Science learning and wish to use this in everyday life, future education and even their career. Children will have a rich Science capital. From data and assessment there will be progress from each child’s starting point. There will be a good level of understanding for scientific knowledge, working scientifically and the Science inquiry skills.  Children will have developed more than just skills relating to Science, they will have developed questioning and reasoning skills, their ability to hold a debate, their communication skills and their resilience.

Science and SEND

For those children at Churchfield who have SEND, Science is a valuable subject. By using a range of child led inquiries, children are able to explore the world around them. Teachers ensure that there are scaffolds for children needing them, for example visual prompts or sentence starters and learning is differentiated to meet the needs of individual children.  Children are able to take ownership of their learning when they are answering their own questions and can use resources such as talking tins (which record speech) to record this. With a hands on approach to apply scientific knowledge, children are able to develop their understanding when they see the science come alive. Science is linked to other curriculum subjects such as Computing where children use iPads and Purple Mash for recording, such as making graphs and recording their investigations.