Science
Engaging, exciting and empowering lifelong learners through a creative, mastery-based curriculum
Our curriculum is centred around developing the whole child: from their head, to their heart, to their hand.
The characteristics of a scientist at East Farleigh
The ability to think independently and raise questions about working scientifically and the knowledge and skills that it brings.
Confidence and competence in the full range of practical skills, taking the initiative in, for example, planning and carrying out scientific investigations.
Excellent scientific knowledge and understanding which is demonstrated in written and verbal explanations, solving challenging problems and reporting scientific findings.
High levels of originality, imagination or innovation in the application of skills.
The ability to undertake practical work in a variety of contexts, including fieldwork.
A passion for science and its application in past, present and future technologies.
Curriculum Ambition: Science
At East Farleigh Primary School, our intent is to approach science with a deeper, more engaging curriculum. With a mastery approach, to accelerate higher order thinking, the children will feel inspired and be equipped with the skills, and knowledge necessary to follow their own natural curiosity, applying the scientific inquiry and reasoning skills they have learnt to other settings, challenges and experiences in their lives.
The children will develop as scientists, with the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. All children will be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. They will be empowered with skills of observation, scrutiny, questioning, comparison and contrast, ordering and evaluation. They will become passionate enquirers and be utterly absorbed by the world around them; inspired to push boundaries of understanding through observation, testing, and hypothesising questions they have created themselves.
The ambition of the science curriculum is to excite through the tangible experiences and investigations that are taught. With this wonder, we create curiosity within the children for them to want to question, explore and discover further. We aim to inspire and capture the minds of the children which therefore leads them to question the world around us and become lifelong learners.
Curriculum Design: Science
Curriculum Concepts: Science
Our pupils should be able to organise their knowledge, skills and understanding around the following learning hooks:
Biology:
Understand plants
Understand animals and humans
Investigate living things
Understand evolution and inheritance
Chemistry:
Investigate materials
Work scientifically
Physics:
Understand movement, forces and magnets
Understand the Earth’s movement in space
Investigate light and seeing
Investigate sound and hearing
Understand electrical circuits
These key concepts or as we like to explain them to children – learning hooks, underpin learning in each milestone. This enables pupils to reinforce and build upon prior learning, make connections and develop subject specific language.
Meeting Milestones: Science
As part of our curriculum philosophy, built on around the concept of mastery and learning being a change to long-term memory, it is impossible to see impact in the short term. We do, however, use assessment based on deliberate practice. This means that we look at the practices taking place to determine whether they are appropriate, related to our goals and likely to produce results in the long run. We use comparative judgement in two ways: in the tasks we set (POP tasks) and in comparing a child's work over time. We also use lesson observations to see if the pedagogical style matches our depth expectations.
End of year teacher assessments, which take into account engagement in lessons, quality of outcomes and results from any POP/ summative tasks, help to form a judgement about a child's attainment within the subject. These judgements are made in relation to a child's progress towards mastering biannual milestones against four essential threshold concepts (see above).
What do our pupils think?
Aspirations for the future
Pupils develop an understanding of how subjects and specific skills are linked to future jobs. Here are some of the jobs they could aspire to do in the future as a Scientist:
Aquatic vet
Astronaut
Animal researcher or a marine biologist
Helicopter mission control
Weather presenter
For more careers, please visit First Careers and Career Stem.