Science
Vision
At Catcott, we aim to inspire children to discover a truth in the earth around them. Through science and investigation, children will not only develop our school aims of independence, resilience and thinking skills, but they will also engage with the world around them and develop an understanding of how things work so they can grow up to fully contribute to the society in which they live.
Rationale
Here at Catcott, our curriculum is designed to give children substantive knowledge so they have a strong understanding of the world around them, whilst acquiring disciplinary knowledge to gain working scientifically skills.
Scientific enquiry is embedded into our curriculum and all children are encouraged to develop a range of enquiry skills that are built upon each year. Children will learn disciplinary knowledge by planning, doing and reviewing comparative/fair tests, observations over time, pattern seeking enquiries, grouping and classifying tasks as well as carrying out scientific research. Children are also encouraged to apply their knowledge and use critical thinking skills to solve scientific problems through ‘Big Questions’. These enquiries are designed to inspire children to use their natural curiosity to discover and question the world around them.
We implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Our curriculum aims to ensure progression and full coverage of the National Curriculum through carefully planned opportunities that allow children to revisit and build upon prior knowledge, therefore transferring learning to long-term memory.
Each topic across the key stages endeavours to provide all children with the opportunity to build on their science capital through media consumption, visits from/to a range of people whose jobs require science and through school trips. These opportunities allow children to see science beyond the classroom and inspire them to move onto careers in science and engineering.