Five Elms Primary School

Intent

At Five Elms, our intent is to provide children with a science curriculum, which enables them to confidently explore and discover the world around them, in order to develop a deeper understanding of the world in which we live. The exciting, practical, hands-on experiences our curriculum provides encourages their natural curiosity and develops their scientific skills of questioning, observing, exploring, researching, hypothosizing, experimenting, measuring and concluding alongside the use of a growing scientific vocabulary. We encourage them to be inquisitive and continually question their experiences and learning.

Implementation

Our curriculum is designed to encourage our children to ask their own scientific questions and to give them opportunities to use their scientific skills to discover the answers. At the core of the planning is the knowledge and concept vocabulary required for the area of learning, this has been carefully developed to ensure progress from year to year. A clear learning sequence ensures that the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 are met and build on previous learning alongside clear outcomes to ensure that there is no repetition of activities. The planning involves creating engaging lessons making relevent and purposeful links within other areas of the curriculum (to place the children’s learning in a real life context and enabling them to develop their science capital) and also providing outdoor learning opportunities wherever possible. Five Elms Primary School Working scientifically skills are embedded within the plans and ensure that a wide range is used across all the scientific areas of biology, chemistry and physics. Assessment for learning questioning is also sequenced and provides opportunites for the children to deepen their understanding of a concept and to further encourage their critical thinking. In addtion to the planning the children are given the opportunity of extra currciular visits to museums, exhibitions, our borough’s Great Science Share and other experiences to broaden and complement their learning.

Impact

We believe that these opportunities will ensure that our children are confident, life-long learners who will explore the world around them making their own discoveries through being independently inquisitive and resilient to critical evaluation of their evidence. In addition, promoting the experience of exploring and investigating scientific phenomena, in a range of real life contexts will ensure they make links between science and other subjects, further enabling them to build a continuing evolving knowledge and bank of core skills to equip them for an ever-changing world.

After 18 months of being built, our school pond is teeming with new life!  This week we discovered amongst the froglets, dragonfly nymphs, water snails and plants...COMMON SMOOTH NEWTS!  This means our pond is very diverse and a true urban wildlife habitat.  If you visit the pond please be careful not to disturb them too much.  Here are some photos and a video to show you our new neighbour!