At St. Mary’s RC Primary School, we want every child to be happy and enthusiastic learners of Science, and to be eager to achieve their very best in order to fulfil their God-given talents. We firmly believe that the recipe for success is high quality first-wave teaching in Science, which is central to the life of our happy, caring school.
Science teaching at St. Mary’s RC Primary School aims to give all children a strong understanding of the world around them whilst acquiring specific skills and knowledge to help them to think scientifically, to gain an understanding of scientific processes and also an understanding of the uses and implications of science, today and for the future. At St. Mary’s we aim to promote a love of science and nurture and develop children as critical, creative and collaborative thinkers. Scientific enquiry skills are embedded in each topic the children study (where appropriate) and these topics are revisited and developed throughout their time at school. This model allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and increases their enthusiasm for the topics whilst embedding this procedural knowledge into the long-term memory.
All children are encouraged to develop and use a range of skills including observations, planning and investigations, as well as being encouraged to question the world around them and become independent learners in exploring possible answers for their scientific based questions. Specialist vocabulary for topics is taught and built up, and effective questioning to communicate ideas is encouraged. Concepts taught should be reinforced by focusing on the key features of scientific enquiry, so that pupils learn to use a variety of approaches to answer relevant scientific questions.