We deliver  science lessons which excite and engage pupils. We encourage children to ask questions about the world around them and provide them with hands-on opportunities to investigate for themselves.

Through practical investigations, high quality direct teaching, research, visits out and inviting people into our school, we aim to provide children with the required level of scientific knowledge in a way that they will remember.

Our science curriculum will empower children to both make sense of our world and believe they can change it for the better. It encourages respect for living things, our natural environment and the climate.  In this way, science makes a key contribution to the delivery of our school curriculum aims and intent.

At Richard Alibon Primary, we believe that children learn science best when:

  • they investigate, through hands on experience, questions they create for themselves
  • teaching challenges preconceptions and encourages children to test what they know
  • lessons stimulate high quality conversations about what children have observed
  • learning is relevant to the children’s everyday lives
  • lessons proactively engage the children’s analytical thinking and teach them new skills​
  • lessons are well planned and well resourced, but leave space for surprises

By building up a body of knowledge and concepts, pupils are encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about the world around them.

The process of scientific investigation

We deliver the National Curriculum using a hands-on practical investigative approach where possible. Pupils learn to raise questions and turn ideas into investigations. They make predictions and observations as they either work individually or as a pair or in a team. Pupils use their skills taught in English and maths to take measurements, record and evaluate the evidence they have found. They also have opportunities to log data using their computing skills. Consequently, pupils make conclusions based on what they have investigated. We want out children to work like scientists as this is how our known body of scientific knowledge has been developed.

Scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding

The science curriculum at Richard Alibon Primary School describes the sequence of knowledge and concepts that children learn. The curriculum is planned to support children to develop a secure understanding of each key block of knowledge and concepts in order to progress to the next stage.This is revisited across the key stage to ensure the children remember key concepts and knowledge. Our pupils learn to use technical terminology accurately whilst building up a scientific vocabulary. Pupils also learn about the contribution science makes to our society.

At times, this scientific knowledge needs to be directly taught or researched.

Additional documents to support the Science curriculum at Richard Alibon can be found below:

Science Overview for KS1 and KS2

Richard Alibon Primary School Science progression of skills

Richard Alibon Science Policy

 

Richard Alibon Year 1 Science Curriculum

Richard Alibon Year 2 Science Curriculum

Richard Alibon Year 3 Science Curriculum

Richard Alibon Year 4 Science Curriculum

Richard Alibon Year 5 Science Curriculum

Richard Alibon Year 6 Science Curriculum