“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world” – Louis Pasteur.
Intent
At Manaccan School, we are committed to providing a primary science curriculum that is underpinned by our three curriculum drivers: aspiration, curiosity, and diversity. Our science curriculum provides the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
At Manaccan School, we believe that science is a fundamental part of everyday life and the diverse and ever-changing world around us and our place in it. It is through the study of our science curriculum that we encourage our pupils’ natural curiosity and teach the knowledge, enquiry and working scientifically skills to develop their understanding of, and to illuminate the world around them and beyond. Cornwall is globally significant from a scientific point of view within the world in which we live. Our curriculum shares this with our pupils, showing that they too can aspire to achieve this if they believe that they can.
In Nursery and Reception children explore the natural world around them, making observations of animals and plants. They understand some important processes and changes in the natural world around them, including the seasons and changing states of matter. Science gives children the opportunities to find out and gather experiences which they need to understand the world in which we live.
Key Stage One and Two
We ensure that sufficient time is given to Science, in order to enable pupils to meet the expectations set out in the National Curriculum programme of study. The Science curriculum is coherent and shows progression, allowing time for children to develop and build on their scientific, curious, investigative and reflection skills.
Children have the opportunity to use a variety of data, such as statistics, graphs, pictures, and photographs. We provide engaging learning opportunities for all children by:
- Setting tasks of increasing difficulty
- Providing resources of different complexity.
- Providing challenges designed to allow the children to reflect and think deeper about their learning.
- Asking open ended questions, encouraging the skills of enquiry and investigation
They also begin to recognise that scientific ideas change and develop over time. They select the most appropriate ways to answer science questions using different types of scientific enquiry, including observing changes over different periods of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out comparative and fair tests and finding things out using a wide range of secondary sources of information. Pupils should draw conclusions based on their data and observations, use evidence to justify their ideas, and use their scientific knowledge and understanding to explain their findings. ‘Working and thinking scientifically’ should always be referenced and clearly related to science content in the programme of study. Pupils read, spell and pronounce scientific vocabulary correctly.
