Science

Science Intent

Our science curriculum provides children with a broad range of life skills to use and apply within the wider school curriculum and throughout life. We encourage children to explore and understand the natural and technical world through asking questions and seeking answers to build sufficient understanding. These skills help children to generate ideas, make decisions and to use evidence to understand key concepts.

Developing curiosity, excitement and wonder of the world through exploration encourages their engagement with, and motivation to study science from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the end of Key Stage 2. We want Christ Church children to be equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.

To avoid superficial understanding and misconceptions our science curriculum is designed to provide the children with a progressive and sequenced approach to key knowledge and concepts. We encourage a cross-curricular approach to support transference and application of skills and to ensure learning is purposeful and meaningful. Furthermore, careful planning for an extended writing opportunity in every unit effectively gives the children a significant opportunity to write, edit and discuss.

We are proud to provide our children with a high-quality science education that creatively incorporates and promotes the key skills of reading, writing and using mathematical knowledge, ideas and operations.

Science at Christ Church

At Christ Church our children learn to use a variety of approaches to answer relevant scientific questions. Child-led investigations ensure that they develop scientific enquiry skills, such as:

observing over time;
pattern seeking; identifying, classifying and grouping;
comparative and fair testing (controlled investigations);
researching using secondary sources.

These enquiries improve the children's scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding by giving them opportunities to explore the nature, processes and methods of science. This helps them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.

Once they are equipped with the scientific knowledge they begin to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.

We have carefully created a Science Overview which sequences key knowledge and concepts across Years 1-6. While it is important that pupils make progress, it is also vitally important that they develop secure understanding of each key block of knowledge and concepts in order to progress to the next stage.

Science Overview Year 1-6

Autumn Term 2021/2022

In the Autumn Term, I had the pleasure of speaking to the children about our vision for science at Christ Church. Through our science lessons we aim to allow the children an opportunity to explore the world around them, answering questions and more importantly asking more!

We have introduced the concept of 'The Big Ideas'. It is important that children understand why they are learning certain topics. When speaking to the children, I emphasised the different branches of science they learn at school including chemistry, physics, biology and earth science. It is very important to use information learned from amazing, brilliant scientists from the past, but it is equally as important to learn about the impact science has on the present and the future.

Over the coming year, we will be exploring the big ideas in more detail, and discussing the impact our learning has on the world around us. We will aim to do this through enquiry and working scientifically. The first step in the process is for every science lesson to begin with a question that will be answered. The children will be responsible for developing their knowledge through a range of creative, practical tasks to support them in answering the questions. For example, in Year 4 they were asked 'Why do wires wear coats?'. They were then provided with a range of materials to add to a simple series circuit that they had to build to determine whether a material would conduct or insulate electricity. Then they looked at implications for the real world, such as ensuring electrical wires leading from plugs are covered in plastic or rubber as well as ensuring no electronics are placed near water.

Autumn - Our Planet, Our Duty

We recently had a scientific enquiry fun day where the whole school came out to take part in a range of investigations. These were linked to Science Week and our whole-school butterfly 'Our Planet, Our Duty'. The aim of the day was to develop enquiry skills and understand the impact of human activity on the environment and how we can take care of our planet.

There were 6 stations linked to global issues. The children had to visit each station and earn their badge by completing the investigation.

Take a look at what we did and how much fun we had: