“The important thing is to never stop questioning” Albert Einstein

 At Shrewton Primary school, our intent is to enable children to become enquiry-based learners.  We encourage collaborating through researching, investigating and evaluating experiences. Children have a natural curiosity about the world around them and we encourage them to ask questions and work scientifically to further their conceptual understanding and scientific knowledge.

Children are encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes. It provides opportunities for the critical evaluation of evidence and rational explanation of scientific phenomena as well as opportunity to apply their mathematical knowledge to their understanding, including collecting, presenting and analysing data. Children will be immersed in key scientific vocabulary, which supports in the acquisition of scientific knowledge and understanding.

Our Science curriculum enables pupils:

• Understand key scientific knowledge and be able to retell their science learning journey. The focus in each unit is on long-term memory and metacognition; children will make links across the scientific units they study throughout their time at the school, have a wealth of scientific knowledge at their fingertips and be able to see where their learning will take them next.
• See themselves as scientists. Children are equipped with the skills required to develop and refine their own investigations and can devise their own methods for testing a scientific theory, using a selected investigation type.
• Are prepared for the science of the future. As new technologies change, children will keep up to date with new advances and learn about the latest, cutting-edge developments that will change the world
• Stay curious. Children can ask scientific questions and find out the answers, using their knowledge and expanding it to the wider world. They make links across themselves, the wider world and texts they have read.

Our knowledge is organised into key concepts and disciplinary concepts. The core knowledge is laid out in coherent, sequential progression documents which detail the end points which we aim children to achieve. The foundations for the Science curriculum are built in Early Years. This is built on in KS1 as novice, leading to more expert in KS2. This provides the firm building blocks for children to become disciplinary in KS3 and beyond.

Key concepts

Key concepts support children in developing an understanding of their experience, a system of categorisation, and how they learn and use these systems. In this way, children build a schema of knowledge and skills for key area through which they can reason and talk about the different disciplines of physical education. Key concepts shape the overarching enquiry question for the area. We have three main concepts in Science which we investigate through 7 different areas.

Disciplinary concepts

Disciplinary concepts shape the enquiry questions asked in a subject and organise the subject knowledge progressively. The disciplinary concepts drive the teaching sequence towards answering the overarching key question for the area. They can all be applied across the entire subject and everyone is interconnected.

• What do I want to find out?
• What equipment and resources do I have available to me?
• What do I need to do to answer the question?
• How will I show the steps of the enquiry?