Teachers create a positive attitude to science learning within their classrooms and reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standard. Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of Science involves the following:

• Science knowledge will be taught in unit blocks based on the three key threads, living things and their habitats, forces and energy and materials. These threads have been devised from the national curriculum objectives linking the key units: plant, animals including humans (animal focus), animals including humans (human focus), living things and their habitats (habitats), materials and rocks, forces and magnets, light, sound, electricity and seasonal changes and earth and space. Evolution and inheritance is covered within the animals and habitats units.
• Lessons have been created to be engaging, informative and promote curiosity. Each lesson has a clear focus. Scientific knowledge and enquiry skills are developed with increasing depth and challenge as children move through the year groups. They complete investigations and hands-on activities while gaining the scientific knowledge for each unit
• The thread Scientific enquiry ensures the 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. This is developed through the years, in-keeping with the units and shown on lesson plans and progression maps.
• All lessons have a national curriculum learning objective and are linked to key learning outcomes.
• Each new lesson begins with a ‘prior knowledge’ or ‘remember it’ section.
• Through our planning we involve problem solving opportunities that allow children to apply their knowledge, and find out answers for themselves. Children are encouraged to ask their own questions and be given the opportunity to use their scientific skills to research the answers. 
• We build on the knowledge and skills of the previous year using the progression maps, overviews and STPs. As the children’s knowledge and understanding increases, and they become more proficient when working scientifically, they become increasingly confident in their ability to come to conclusions based on real evidence.
• Outdoor learning opportunities are used to develop children’s understanding of their surroundings.
• Regular events, such as Science week or project days allow all pupils to come off-timetable, to provide broader provision and the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills which gives an opportunity to carry out further investigations and develop their scientific enquiry skills.
• Children are able to broaden their scientific knowledge further by introducing them throughout the threads to a variety of important scientists and inventors. They are then able to understand why these inventions and discoveries where important and helped shape life today.
• The national curriculum for science reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. At Western Primary School science lessons provide a quality and variety of subject specific language to enable the development of children’s confident and accurate use of scientific vocabulary and their ability to articulate scientific concepts clearly and precisely. This progression of vocabulary is mapped out across the key stages and displayed in classrooms.
• All classrooms display a science working wall which reflects the learning happing in that classroom at that time. They allow children to recap knowledge and see their own progression of learning.
• Cross curricula links to other areas of the curriculum are used where possible some example include-

Maths data analysis, creating charts and graphs

Music sound, pitch, dynamic, vibration

Art and DT dioramas, collages of habitats, detailed drawings of findings and change

Writing recording the method of the experiments

PE involved with outdoor exploration

Geography geographical features, water cycles, states of matter, habitats

Progress is measured through a child’s ability to know more, remember more and explain more. This can be measured in different ways. Children who feel confident in their science knowledge and enquiry skills will be excited about science, show that they are actively curious to learn more and will see the relevance of what they learn in science lessons to real-life situations and also the importance of science in the real world.