Intent

At St John’s, we follow a topic-based curriculum where biology, chemistry and physics are taught through high-quality lessons, thereby enabling children to build a secure foundation and understanding of the world. Children are taught through engaging lessons which excite and encourage their natural curiosity in our changing world. Scientific knowledge and key concepts empower our children to ask and answer questions about the world around them. They develop skills to explain, predict and analyse to understand the uses and implications of science for their future as well as today.

Implementation

The teaching of Science across St John’s follows the National Curriculum through:

• comprehensive and thorough bespoke planners of topics designed specifically for our school community.
• breadth of learning from EYFS to KS2, where knowledge and skills are developed progressively and abstract ideas/vocabulary (e.g. materials, vertebrates and invertebrates, carbohydrates, magnetic) are revisited and built upon with each year group
• cross curricular links where children are encouraged to apply other learning e.g. DT, maths, geography, art, music. Our topics are cross curricular to ensure excellent links for children.
• teaching 2 school values within each science topic. This links learning in science (and other subjects) to the wider school focus on British values, communicated namely through collective worships.
• delivery that allows children to be excited and curious, to predict, enquire, analyse and explain scientific concepts.
• collaborative learning, where children work together towards goals, exploring different roles within a team.
• explicit teaching of vocabulary for each topic.
• a focus on retrieval and revisiting knowledge to allow it to be embedded in the long term memory.

Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice) and asking key assessment questions to a range of children.
• monitoring teacher planning.
• celebrating images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• measuring assessment standards against written evidence in learning journals.

EYFS

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

ELG: The Natural World Children at the expected level of development will:

- Explore the natural world around them, making observations and drawing pictures of animals and plants; 

- Know some similarities and differences between the natural world around them and contrasting environments, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class;

- Understand some important processes and changes in the natural world around them, including the seasons and changing states of matter.

An important part of quality science teaching and learning is catering for all types of learners. At St John's we carefully consider the needs of all our children as individuals. Open our maps to see how teaching staff reflect on pedagogical structures and strategies to allow all children to experience an exciting and engaging curriculum!