Our school Science vision and principles
Above you will be able to read our science vision, it is made up of the principles on how the children and staff feel that science should be learnt and taught here at Stella Maris.
There are two main strands to the teaching of Science in our school. The first is to ensure that the children are taught the specific scientific knowledge set out in the National Curriculum, and covering topics including:
- animals including humans
- evolution and inheritance
- living things and their habitats
- Earth and space
- the seasons
- light and sound
The second is to encourage a spirit of curiosity about the world around them and to develop the skills of scientific enquiry: to be able to predict what will happen in a practical activity, to conduct a fair or comparative tests and to record their results accurately, describing clearly what they have discovered.
As part of this, children become increasingly aware of the type of scientific enquiry that they are carrying out or need to carry out to answer their scientific questions.
The types of scientific enquiry are:
- Observation over time
- Pattern Seeking
- Comparative and Fair testing
- Classifying and sorting
- Problem solving
In the process of learning about Science we also try to teach the children to appreciate the magnificence of the created world and to develop an appropriate respect for it and an awareness of issues concerning pollution, the environment and sustainability.
We use the PLAN (Pan-London Assessment Network) assessment resources that support schools to plan and assess effectively the science National Curriculum for England.
More detail can be found here: https://www.planassessment.com/introduction-to-plan
We use the progression of skills documents that have been created by PLAN.
We also use the PLAN knowledge matrices to support teaching and learning in science. This enables us to have a better understanding of the prior and future learning needs in each area of the curriculum. It also provides possible misconceptions that may be encountered as well as subject specific vocabulary and learning outcomes.