Science is a vibrant and exciting subject at our school and one about which we are incredibly passionate. Children naturally have lots of questions about the world around them and we aim to encourage this curiously as well as providing them with the necessary core scientific knowledge and investigative skills to answer their questions about those processes.
At present, our curriculum provides a rich variety of topics that cover all the core scientific disciplines and contexts that the children can relate to their everyday lives. This includes learning about plants, animals including humans, materials, seasons, rocks, lights, forces, sound, electricity and evolution and inheritance. Each year, children study a range of these and cover topics for each scientific disciplines (biology, chemistry and physics). Children are encouraged to be curious and ask questions at the start of each topic. They will then explore these question using a variety of investigative skills, engaging and becoming more familiar with each of the elements of the scientific method as they progress through the school. These include skills such as generating their own lines of enquiry, making predictions, analysing results, observing changes over time, collecting results in a variety of ways, drawing conclusions from their observations and evaluating their own method and the reliability of their results.
Underpinning this is an emphasis on children actively participating in their own practical investigations and experiments, utilizing the classroom, wider school environment and the local environment and community.
Science is a way of discovering more about the world around us and is integral in everyday life. It is a body of knowledge which attempts to explain our experiences. In order to achieve and apply this knowledge we must learn and follow sets of skills and processes. It develops our attitudes towards scientific enquiry and thus we must be scientifically literate.
At Sharow CE Primary School we believe that science should provide the chance to develop the natural curiosity of the child, encourage respect for living organisms and the physical environment and provide opportunities for critical evaluation of evidence.
Please see the attached long term plan overview.