Science

At Cartmel Primary we want our children to be naturally curious about the world around them. Our curriculum has been developed to ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum and to foster a sense of wonder about natural phenomena. We are committed to providing a stimulating, engaging and challenging learning environment where children are encouraged to develop and use a range of scientific skills including questioning, researching and observing for themselves. Our science curriculum also introduces the children to a broad scientific vocabulary.

How we implement our science curriculum:

We use a variety of teaching styles in science lessons. Our principal aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills, and understanding. Sometimes we do this through whole-class teaching, while at other times we engage the children in an enquiry-based research activity. We encourage the children to ask, as well as answer, scientific questions. They have the opportunity to use a variety of data, such as statistics, graphs, pictures, and photographs. They use ICT in science lessons where it enhances their learning. They may take part in role-play and discussions and they present reports to the rest of the class. They engage in a wide variety of problem-solving activities. Wherever possible, we involve the pupils in ‘real’ scientific activities, for example, researching a local environmental problem or carrying out a practical experiment and analysing the results.

We recognise that there are children of widely different scientific abilities in all classes and we ensure that we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this by:

Setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;

Differentiating tasks based on pupil ability;

Providing resources of different complexity, matched to the ability of the child;

The school uses the National Curriculum for science as the basis of its curriculum planning. We have planned the topics in science so that they build upon prior learning ensuring the children are increasingly challenged as they move up the school.