Science
“A high-quality science education provides the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. Through building up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts, pupils should be encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena. They should be encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes.” – National Curriculum for Secondary Science
- Well-sequenced - our curriculum builds on the ‘Big Ideas’ of science, for example, students start in Year 7 by learning about atoms, which spirals through the year to introduce students to the ‘Big Idea’ that structure determines properties, which is vertically integrated and revisited in Year 8 and 9 when students learn about the Periodic Table, and these ideas are built upon in GCSE Chemistry, where we look at patterns and trends in reactions. Literacy, numeracy, and SMSC are developed through the years to help build students confidence with scientific vocabulary and mathematical abilities, we integrate ‘maths for science’ lessons through our KS3 and KS4 curriculum. Topics start with a recap of prior Scientific knowledge, and learning is carefully sequenced to build and extend previous ‘Big Ideas’ and apply them to new concepts.
- Contextualised/inclusive - our curriculum links theory to practical work, allowing students to explore the phenomena they are learning. Scientific enquiry skills are explicitly taught and developed through the 5-year progression. Students are introduced to different scientific careers through their five year journey. Opportunities for educational visits are offered to every year group, and STEM club runs weekly as a co-curricular offer to encourage students to further develop their enquiry skills. Students learn about how electricity is generated and priced, and they can debate topical issues with confidence.
- Ambitious - our curriculum is knowledge-rich, we deliver expert instruction and quality first teaching to close gaps, interleaving and retrieval practice to aid memory retrieval. We cover wider academic content than the National Curriculum requires, and we provide opportunities for pupils to develop their scientific literacy and career opportunities with interleaved activities through the curriculum. Students can use their scientific knowledge to be independent, for example making informed decisions about nutrition and diet based on their knowledge gained from our Biology curriculum.
Key Stage 3
Key Stage 4