Science at St John's 

Our Intent for Science 

            Wonder 

At St John's, all pupils are taught the key knowledge, methods and uses of science outlined in the National Curriculum 2014

Our Intent is for our children to leave St. John’s as confident scientists, inspired to explore and pursue the huge range of STEM careers available to them. We believe that it is vital that pupils enter secondary school with both a detailed knowledge of the inter-related disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics and a strong understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science, developed through practical experiments.

St John's teaches science as a discrete subject from Years 1 to 6 and in Early Years, children will discover science through the Understanding the World area of learning. In all year groups, there will be lots of opportunities for hands-on experiences.

The science curriculum is organised into units, allocated to each year group based on the National Curriculum and supported by the Developing Experts Resource. Children will be able to access this brilliant website from home where they can continue the learning from their lessons. Each unit is designed to support the development of a specific area of scientific knowledge, along with a strand of scientific skills. The curriculum is designed to be spiral in nature, with pupils returning to areas of learning in greater depth as they move through the school.

We also pay attention to five types of scientific enquiry;

We are supported in this by research from; The Science & Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub (SEERIH), based at the University of Manchester.

This group works with practising teachers to drive the improvement of science and engineering in the UK and we have based our enquiry model on their work. 

Science Overview 

The National Curriculum for Science aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics
• develop an understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them
• are equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future

At St John’s CE Primary, the teaching and learning of science embeds the working scientifically requirements into each topic so that in addition to the core knowledge and vocabulary, children are developing skills of observation, investigation and fair testing, classification and data handling.