Lambton Primary School

Intent

Science teaching at Lambton Primary School aims to give all children a strong understanding of the world around them whilst acquiring specific skills and knowledge to help them to think scientifically, to gain an understanding of scientific processes and also an understanding of the uses and implications of Science, today and for the future.

At Lambton, scientific enquiry skills are embedded in each topic the children study and these topics are revisited and developed throughout their time at school. Topics, such as plants, are taught in Key Stage One and studied again in further detail throughout Key Stage Two. This model allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and increases their enthusiasm for the topics whilst embedding this procedural knowledge into the long-term memory.

All children are encouraged to develop and use a range of skills including observations, planning and investigations, as well as being encouraged to question the world around them and become independent learners in exploring possible answers for their scientific based questions. Specialist vocabulary for topics is taught and built up, and effective questioning to communicate ideas is encouraged. Concepts taught should be reinforced by focusing on the key features of scientific enquiry, so that pupils learn to use a variety of approaches to answer relevant scientific questions.

Implementation

At Lambton we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in science lessons. Our principal aim is to develop children's knowledge, skills, and understanding. Sometimes, we do this through whole-class teaching, while at other times, we engage the children in an enquiry-based research activity. We encourage the children to ask, as well as answer, scientific questions. They have the opportunity to use a variety of data, such as statistics, graphs, pictures and photographs. They use ICT in science lessons because it enhances their learning. They take part in role-play and discussions, and they present reports to the rest of the class. They engage in a wide variety of problem-solving activities. Wherever possible, we involve the pupils in real scientific activities, e.g. investigating a local environmental problem, or carrying out a practical experiment and analysing the results.

At Lambton we are working to overcome the stereotypes associated with science and highlight the importance of science within everyday modern life, incorporating modern day and local scientists into our curriculum. Ensuring that children learn through varied and first hand experiences of the world around them. Through various workshops, trips and interactions with local experts, children have the understanding that science has changed our lives and that it is vital to the world’s future prosperity. We want children to enjoy science and believe that this ultimately results in motivated and passionate learners.

We recognise that in all classes, children have a wide range of scientific abilities, and we ensure that we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

using questioning to promote child lead learning
setting tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
setting tasks of increasing difficulty (we do not expect all children to complete all tasks);
Allowing children to work in mixed ability pairs to support each other
providing resources of different complexity, matched to the ability of the child;
using classroom assistants, where available, to support the work of individual children or groups of children.

Impact

Our Science Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: