Intent
Alkrington Primary school believe that Science should develop children to be naturally curious about the world around them. We recognise the importance of Science in every aspect of daily life. As one of the core subjects taught in Primary Schools, we give the teaching and learning of Science the prominence it requires. It is taught as a discrete subject and the curriculum has been developed by staff using Chris Quigley ‘Threshold Concepts’. This ensures key skills are progressive throughout the school and are in accordance with the Working Scientifically skills expectations of the National Curriculum. We study a varied curriculum building on knowledge year by year across the three scientific disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Children are encouraged to develop and use a range of skills including enquiry, questioning, observing, identifying and recording.
Implementation
Science is taught discretely, as a core subject. To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in science, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the school. Our curriculum is designed with spaced repetition and interleaving to aid long term retention. Working Scientifically skills are embedded into lessons to ensure these skills are being developed throughout the children’s school career and new vocabulary and challenging concepts are introduced through direct teaching.
Impact
We aim for our children to leave our school with a high-quality science education which provides the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. We believe that Science has an impact on everyone’s lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and therefore all our pupils should leave our school having essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. Through building up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts, our pupils should recognise the power of rational explanation and have a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena. By the time our children leave Alkrington, they should understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes.
For each of the threshold concepts three milestones, each containing the knowledge the children need to understand the threshold concepts, provides a progression model. The detail included in these plans can be seen by clicking on the milestone links below: