Rationale

Science changes our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity and all children should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes, and uses of science. Our children will be encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes.

The teaching of Science at Thorpe aims to ensure that children develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding and skills through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. Science is taught based on the national curriculum programme of study and shaped by our intent, implementation and impact aims.

In EYFS, through the specific area of Understanding the World (The Natural World) children will have the opportunity to discuss and explore seasonal changes and weather patterns, name and compare animals and plants and identify, name and group everyday materials based on their properties.

Intent

When teaching Science at Thorpe, we intend to

• provide a cohesive curriculum which caters for the needs of all individuals.
• to focus upon the development of 5 key scientific skills
• observing over time
• comparative and fair testing
• pattern seeking
• identifying and classifying
• research

Implementation

We implement our approach through high quality teaching delivering appropriately challenging work for all individuals. To support us we have a range of resources and enrichment opportunities which include STEM outreach workshops from local affiliations. We provide learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make good progress. We take all reasonable steps to meet the needs of those pupils with special educational needs, those with disabilities, those with special gifts and talents, and those learning English as an additional language (EAL), so they make good progress in Science.

Science lessons follow the school guidelines for health and safety and the safeguarding of all pupils.

Impact  

Through our teaching we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age. We complete end of block, where appropriate, and end of term assessments and use these to compile formative assessment checklists. These in turn inform our discussions during termly Pupil Progress Meetings and are used to update our summative school tracker –Insight tracking -termly. The main purpose of all assessment is to ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child. We identify gaps in understanding and work hard to address them.  Monitoring of children’s work and of the quality of teaching and learning in Science is completed through lesson observations and work scrutiny.