Science

Subject Lead - Mrs K.McClue

At Priory Lane Community School, we are all scientists!

At Priory Lane Community School, we recognise the importance of science in every aspect of daily life, and as one of the core subjects, we give the teaching and learning of science the prominence it deserves. Through science learning, children are able to increase their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, whilst we also encourage their natural curiosity. Alongside this, our children also develop a range of skills through the process of scientific enquiry, such as questioning and explaining; which we believe are fundamental life-skills.  We want the children of Priory Lane Community School to be the scientists of the future, and understand that is essential to increase their science capital at this critical stage of their lives.

The national curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics
• develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them
• are equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future
• develop the essential scientific enquiry skills to deepen their scientific knowledge

At Priory Lane Community School, children have weekly science lessons throughout Key Stage 1 and 2. This ensures that children are able to build on learning from previous year groups, as well as making links between their learning within the unit of science being taught. Through these weekly lessons, children develop depth in their knowledge and a progression of skills. In EYFS, science is taught through developing the children’s understanding about the world around them. Their play and exploration forms the foundation of inspiring awe and wonder in the children of Priory Lane Community School.

The science curriculum at Priory Lane Community School looks like:

• Science taught as the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics
• The start of each science lesson is devoted to KPL, where children either recap scientific knowledge, recap previous learning which forms the foundation for teachers to build upon in their new unit of science, and links, where children are expected to make links between what they have already learned within that unit that is going to help them with their current learning
• A science display board in each classroom, including key scientific vocabulary, diagrams, photos and children’s ideas
• Children given regular opportunities to develop their enquiry skills when they explore, question, predict, plan, carry out investigations and observations, and then conclude their findings
• Children to identify which of the 5 types of scientific enquiry they are carrying out - comparative and fair test, observing over time, pattern seeking, identifying, classifying and grouping, and researching using secondary sources – by using the relevant sticker in their books
• Children using scientific equipment effectively
• Children presenting their findings and learning using scientific vocabulary, observations, scientific diagrams, tables, charts and graphs
• Teachers creating a positive attitude to science learning within their classrooms, reinforcing an expectation that all children are capable of achieving in science
• Effective modelling by teachers, through regular use of the teacher-led instruction approach as best practice, to ensure that children are able to achieve and that misconceptions are addressed within the teacher modelling
• Teachers using questioning to test children’s knowledge and skills, deepen understanding, and to regularly identify any children with gaps in learning
• Planned cross-curricular links to other curriculum subjects, such as data handling in maths, the use of electrical circuits in DT, keeping our bodies healthy in PSHE and through non-fiction writing in English
• Regular science events such as Science Week, Women in Science Day and taking part in the Edina Trust Bulb Project
• Support from STEM ambassadors to complement and broaden the curriculum, making links with the knowledge being taught in class

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” – Carl Sagan, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astrobiologist.

Science documents...