Intent

At St Nicholas Priory, we want our curriculum to produce inquisitive, skillful scientists who are prepared to challenge the world around them. We aim to supply a science curriculum rich in knowledge and practical skills to allow students to feel confident in questioning evidence given to them and conducting their own research. Our intent is to allow students the flexibility and opportunity to follow their own lines of inquiry by providing them the tools to achieve this. By deepening their understanding, we are helping them grow into confident, aspirational, passionate human beings who are equipped with the knowledge to be successful and to make a difference to their community and beyond.

Children should be able to use and understand scientific vocabulary to hypothesise, explain occurrences, make predictions and analyse results to come up with their own conclusions. They should feel that science is accessible to everyone. It is an ever-evolving subject and at St Nicholas Priory we believe it is important to equip our children with the knowledge and skills they can use and successfully develop in the future.

Implementation 

At St Nicholas Priory we aim to produce independent learners through the use of our creative learning. This enables students to follow their own lines of thinking and questioning within a structured environment. We provide a mixture of taught lessons, to ensure that the pupils have the knowledge and understanding, and independent activities which allow the pupils to apply what they have learnt. In class, we aim to provide as many hands-on, practical experiences as possible, making sure that all learners can access the curriculum. This also enhances the children’s working scientifically skills. Throughout school, the children focus on becoming experts within the ‘big ideas’ which are Biology, Chemistry and Physics and are constantly adding to their bank of knowledge within these areas.

We follow the CUSP curriculum which ensures that the children are constantly building on the knowledge that they have already acquired. The CUSP programme ensures that our children are accessing science at the highest level by providing them with challenging content, knowledge and vocabulary. CUSP provides more than the basic national curriculum within science, it looks at wider issues and deeper concepts within science to enable our learners to achieve above and beyond. 

We also endeavour to provide our children with a wide variety of experiences within science. Last year we provided the opportunity to watch a live science show provided by The Royal Institution. All children from KS1 and KS2 were able to attend the show which enables our pupils to understand just how exciting science is. There was also an evening show, allowing for our whole school community, families and friends, to also attend, making sure that our science curriculum is not just restricted to our children. In addition to this, training was also provided which introduced us to the play, observe, ask model which supports our school’s ethos of independent learning. From this, we aim to provide our children with open ended opportunities to allow them to develop their own thinking and decision-making. 

Impact

The impact of our curriculum and delivery of science is that our children will have a greater appreciation for their world, be encouraged to make a difference and have a better understanding of the impact they can have and how the world works.

The children will feel empowered and in a position where they can question information and evidence given to them and know how to challenge this. 

The children will have the skillset to create their own enquiries and know how to conduct these experiments. 

The children will have a wide variety of scientific knowledge and understanding which they will be able to apply in a practical way.

The children will have higher aspirations and believe they are capable of following a scientific pathway should they wish to.