Intent

At St. Stephen’s, we aim to enable our children to learn about the world around them in an exciting and child-led way. We make every effort to provide our learners with repeated opportunities to practice their newly acquired skills in order to deepen and strengthen their understanding. Pupils are taught how to explore and investigate concepts and subjects, developing an interest and enjoyment of Science as they learn about the world through experimentation and investigation. We believe science should be fun, encourage questioning and develop children’s curiosity.

Through our enquiry-based science curriculum, we believe children can experience new skills in contexts relevant to themselves. Key skills are mapped for each year group and are progressive throughout the school. These too ensure systematic progression to identified skills end points which are in accordance with the Working Scientifically skills expectations of the national curriculum. As a school, we are aware of the importance of science vocabulary to aid children's knowledge and understanding of the enquiries they are studying as well as the world around them. During their time in KS2, we will ensure that there is a visible learning journey for all learners which shows both coverage and progression through the curriculum. Cross curricular opportunities are also identified, mapped and planned to ensure contextual relevance.

Science within Enquiries

Implement 

Teachers create positive learning environments towards science learning within the classroom and support children's understanding and knowledge with the expectation that all will achieve high standards within science. 

• Where possible, science is taught and arranged accordingly with enquiry based learning. Helping teachers to enable a mastery approach to our science curriculum.
• Existing knowledge is checked at the beginning of each topic, as part of the KWL strategy (What I know, What I would like to Know and What I have Learned). This ensures that teaching is informed by the children’s starting points and that it takes account of pupil voice, incorporating children’s interests.
• Children are aware When Being A Scientist, they can also makes connections with other areas within their learning, such as When Being A Mathematician where they will use skills particularly in data handling which supports the idea of cross-curricular learning.
• Science is built on from previous objective's learning. 
• 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

At St.Stephen's Juniors, the successful approach results in a fun, engaging, high-quality science education, that provides children with the foundations and knowledge for 'learning to change the world'. Our engagement with the local environment ensures that children learn through varied and first hand experiences of the world around them. Outdoor learning is encouraged at St Stephen's Juniors and this fits with our science approach. Through various workshops, trips and interactions with experts and local charities, children have the understanding that science has changed our lives and that it is vital to the world’s future prosperity.

Mastery in Science

At St. Stephen’s, our mastery approach provides children with repeated opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills across a range of real-life contexts. To start a lesson, teachers will do an 'I do' where the children watch the teacher use the skills and knowledge to complete a given task. The children will then complete a 'We do' where they are then able to apply the same skills and knowledge to a similar task with their learning partner. Once this has been discussed together as a class, the children are set a 'Hinge' style question where the children are asked a question. This helps teachers to assess children’s understanding and determine whether they are ready to apply understanding in another way or whether further teaching is required to address any misconceptions.

Oracy within science