Adam, Year 4

Intent

It is our vision to distil a lifelong love of science within our pupils at Lawnside Academy. Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity.  At Lawnside Academy we work hard to provide a rich and varied curriculum to challenge and meet the needs of our children. We believe all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science.  From EYFS up to KS2 (Year 4) our pupils will build up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts. Pupils are encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena.  We provide our children with wider opportunities in science, through Science Week and school trips.  We monitor our schools progress in science regularly in line with our science policy.

Implementation

We maintain a high level of science subject knowledge in our school by having at least one member of staff in each key stage with degree knowledge. Teachers use assessment on Target Tracker to tailor lessons around our children and help us plan for next steps.

In our school:

• we strongly encourage all pupils to use specific topic related vocabulary and enable SEND pupils to have prior learning of these;
• through effective teaching of science, we develop children’s knowledge and key skills during each topic;
• with effective subject management we are a well-equipped and resourced school;
• regular monitoring shows that our children understand and apply key scientific principles within their work;.
• children are provided with regular opportunities to develop strategies for questioning and thinking.

The principal focus of science teaching is to enable pupils to experience and observe phenomena; looking more closely at the natural and humanly constructed world around them. They should be encouraged to be curious and ask questions about what they notice. They should be helped to develop their understanding of scientific ideas by using different types of scientific enquiry to answer their own questions, including observing changes over a period of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative tests, and finding things out using secondary sources of information. They should begin to use simple scientific language to talk about what they have found out and communicate their ideas to a range of audiences in a variety of ways. Most of the learning about science should be done through the use of first-hand practical experiences, but there should also be some use of appropriate secondary sources, such as books, photographs and videos.

Impact

As a result, our children enjoy and are enthusiastic about science in our school. There is a clear progression of children’s work and teachers’ expectations and children’s work shows a range of topics and evidence of the curriculum coverage for all science topics.

Our children are becoming increasingly independent in science; selecting their own tools and materials, completing pupil lead investigations and choosing their own strategies for recording. Oral feedback from teachers has an impact on our pupils, often with next step questions to push learning on.

Standards in science at the end of the key stages are good and issues arising are addressed effectively in school.