Intent
Most people say that intellect makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character - Albert Einstein
Our goal is to prepare all pupils for life in an increasingly scientific world by fostering their excitement and curiosity about the world around them. We aim to let their natural inquisitiveness drive our science teaching, encouraging exploration and critical thinking as they engage with scientific concepts. We combine scientific knowledge, enquiry and working scientifically skills in order to create well-rounded, knowledgeable global citizens, who are aspirational and prepared to work and live in the future. In our lessons, our intention is to make learning as practical as possible to engage learners with direct links between the topics listed in the national curriculum and real-life situations.
We believe that it is important for pupils to develop their own understanding and discover things for themselves. It is vital that pupils learn in meaningful ways, for example learning why things work and do not work. Our curriculum inspires pupils’ curiosity and allows them to make the necessary connections. We develop their knowledge through hands on activities and practical experiments using the Developing Experts scheme of work.
At Brackenwood Junior School, we use the Snap Science scheme of work by Collins to deliver a coherent progression of the scientific concepts and skills specified in the National Curriculum. The scheme is adapted by teachers where necessary in order to meet the needs of the children and to address any commonly held misconceptions. Lessons are designed to ensure that key concepts and vocabulary are revisited and there are ample opportunities for hands-on, practical scientific enquiries.
Implementation
As Science is a core subject, we ensure its prominence across the school through the delivery of discrete teaching of subjects and units. The implementation of the science curriculum is supported through the Developing Experts Scheme of learning. Knowledge organisers reflect the progression of each area of the curriculum. For each topic, these include key vocabulary, prior learning and expected outcomes for the end of the topic. Knowledge Organisers support pupils to integrate new information into existing schemas, thereby aiding retention and retrieval and securing knowledge. Pupils are provided with a range of enrichment opportunities to raise cultural capital such as STEM week, scientist visitors and outdoor learning. Our working walls reflect our knowledge organisers, alongside key pictures and vocabulary for the unit.
In order for our children to acquire a growing understanding of scientific concepts linking to our environment, at Brackenwood Junior School, we use the Developing Experts scheme along with a variety of scientific equipment to enable all learners to explore new ideas and interesting scientific concepts outlined in the national curriculum. We aim to use a variety of resources to give our pupils a balanced and extensive knowledge of the subject, which will advance their scientific skills. Through using a variety of equipment, we hope that our pupils can develop excellent skills of investigation (measuring, predicting, interpreting etc) whilst acquiring scientific language to become effective communicators of scientific ideas, facts and data.
In our classrooms, we strive to allow children to develop their scientific questioning, perseverance, independence and responsibility through orchestrating their own investigations linking to their topics. These experiments and observations that we incorporate into our teaching allow our pupils to collaborate to strengthen their problem solving and reasoning skills whilst also gaining enjoyment from hands-on activities. It is important to us that our pupils find science an enjoyable and positive experience as this will hopefully develop a lasting interest in science in order to motivate them to study science further on in their lives.
