Greengate Lane Academy Astrea Academy Trust
Science
‘The important thing is to not stop questioning’
Albert Einstein
At Greengate Lane Academy we expect the highest aspirations for our pupils. We want all children to learn and make academic progress no matter their starting points. We have a clear vision for what we want pupils to achieve during their time at Greengate Lane and have designed our curriculum to give all pupils the knowledge, skills and understanding they will need in their future years.
Purpose of Education of Science at Greengate Lane
We aim to provide our children with essential Scientific knowledge that deepens their understanding about the ‘materiality of the world’. Through an ambitious well- sequenced science curriculum, we foster their sense of curiosity, so they can question and explore the disciplines in Science with scholarship, enjoyment and fascination.
Curriculum
We use the Primary Knowledge Curriculum materials, which follows the National Curriculum aims and ambitions and we ensure it is adapted to address pupil’s prior attainment. Pupils use knowledge organisers to support their learning and focus their thinking on the main ideas and concepts. Teachers use regular quizzing so that pupils recall and retrieve to remember and plan practical opportunities to use their scientific skills and enquiry approaches.
The EYFS curriculum is the foundation for scientific knowledge and enquiry and the curriculum plans are flexible to support prior attainment on entry but focused on KS1 destination points, to provide a strong start for pupils in year 1.
Building on prior knowledge, we ensure pupils look at the world through a scientific lens. They study the breadth of knowledge within the disciplines for Biology, Chemistry and Physics, encountering significant scientific figures from the field of science, understanding their endeavours over time in their search for truth and building their knowledge of core concepts or ‘big ideas’. Key concepts are progressively more difficult but are also incrementally repeated to ensure learning builds over time.
We know that scientific vocabulary development is crucial for our learners and local context at Greengate Lane so language development through clearly defined vocabulary and the use of classroom environments to support the teaching of vocabulary is an important part of our curriculum provision.
We ensure that teachers ensure links with the wider curriculum between other disciplines such as D & T, History and Geography so that pupils can be encouraged to make links between ideas and concepts.
Impact of the Curriculum on pupils’ learning
The Science curriculum is ambitious and is in itself the progression model. It is progressively more challenging over time. Pupils complete mini-quizzes and end of unit essays or bigger assessments to check what has been learned and remembered. Children demonstrate their scientific understanding through practical activities as well. With children’s learning outcomes, teachers and leaders talk to pupils about their learning and what they have understood and remembered. Teachers make adaptations to lessons to lessons to anticipate misconceptions or gaps and leaders look at learning across year groups to inform any big decisions about curriculum adaptations. All learning is recorded in work books as a reference point to check on the quality of what is being covered and governors help the school to monitor the quality of these.
Leaders measure the impact of the science curriculum through:
- lesson observations – how well children are contributing to discussions and how they articulate ideas about relevant themes;
- learning walks – how well the curriculum intent is embedded in the learning environment;
- book looks – as part of discussions with teachers and pupils;
- pupil voice – to listen to pupils views about their learning and how well curriculum content is being taught and understood;
- end of unit quizzes and assessments that show what has been remembered.