Science
Our Science curriculum vision is:
To appreciate scientific discovery as the means by which the human race develops understanding of the world and to understand the role of investigation and experimentation in making discoveries.
At Birkbeck, we believe that the robust embedding of knowledge is the key to developing children's scientific understanding. Our Science curriculum strategically develops key threads of concept (which you can read about below) meaning that children are continuously building new knowledge on top of existing knowledge, making it easier for them to embed and retrieve at will.
Developing the foundational knowledge needed to understand the key concepts in each unit of work also means that children are able to apply this to disciplinary knowledge within the subject and work scientifically as a result.
Working scientifically encompasses all science teaching across the school and represents the fundamental skills that a child needs to develop in a disciplinary sense:
- Asking questions
- Planning and setting up different types of enquiries
- Performing tests
- Using equipment
- Observing and measuring
- Identifying and classifying
- Gathering and recording data
- reporting, presenting and communicating data/ findings.
Every year we take part in British Science Week organised by the British Science Association in March.
Our curriculum coverage posters provide information about which units are taught in which year groups and the order in which they are taught. You can view the Science one below:
You can also read about what each unit of work in the Science curriculum includes below.
concept thread development science.pdf
curriculum content by subject science.pdf
Below you can see the development of our key concept threads in grid form so that you can see how each one is progressed and developed as children move through the school.
sciencecurriculum thread development table.pdf
Lesson delivery
Every Science lesson begins with a retrieval practice starter which has the aim of activating prior knowledge around the concept thread which the lesson to come is focused on.
Every lesson also includes clarification of any technical vocabulary to be used in the lesson. This always takes place before the main lesson content begins.
All Science lessons are delivered in line with our principles of teaching and learning which are the same for all subjects. These are the principles that we believe underpin truly great teaching and learning. You can read about how these are applied to Science lessons below. This document also details which units of work children study in which terms of each year.
new birkbeck primary school science implementation guide docx 1 .pdf
Assessment
We assess Science once per term. Children complete an assessment based on the key concepts that have been taught in the unit of work being assessed. The assessments take place in week two of the preceding term to allow for some forgetting to have taken place. This means that we can rely more certainly on the robustness of knowledge that children have remembered. It also means that we can use the assessment as learning opportunity in itself because the act of thinking hard to remember previously taught knowledge actually increases the retrieval strength of that piece of knowledge, meaning that it is easier to retrieve the next time round.
The outcomes from assessments inform our judgements about whether or not a child is meeting the expected standard for a year group but more importantly, they identify gaps in their knowledge that we need to address. The most common gaps are revisited as starter activities for the following six weeks to give children an opportunity to consolidate and re-learn the knowledge a second time.
We also utilise the testing effect (the act of actively trying to remember previously taught knowledge to apply it) on a weekly basis with our 'Early Afternoon Work'. For example, if Science is taught on a Monday then on a Thursday, (3 days after the teaching), children will have a question on the board for them to get on with when they come in from lunch that tests how well they have remembered the content taught on the Monday. Teachers then provide feedback to ensure that the correct understanding has been processed by all children.
Please also take the time to watch this presentation on our Science curriculum.
Science curriculum video
