Science at Carlton

At Carlton Primary Academy, there is a strong, passionate vision for the science curriculum, which clearly supports our mission statement: together we can achieve anything. It is focused upon creating a culture where all children fulfil their scientific potential from a personal, academic and social aspect. Our curriculum is meticulously sequenced – with strong aims of the relevant National Curriculum area embedded within them – to enable our pupils to ask questions, make predictions, set up tests, observe and measure, record data, interpret and communicate results, and importantly, evaluate. Maintaining a challenging breadth and depth within the science curriculum enables our pupils to respect how scientists impact the world through research and application. There is a firm and common understanding of the subject curriculum intent and how the curriculum is underpinned by precise, current, robust research. Moreover, there is a firm and consistent understanding of the subject curriculum intent, and what it means for classroom practice, at all levels.

There is a precise rationale regarding how the curriculum is designed in response to the needs of the pupil in their setting: some topics are taught discretely, whereas others are taught thematically as strands of the curriculum.  Despite the different strategies of teaching the subject, the curriculum is precisely designed and adapted in direct response to starting points, recent trends and common barriers to learning in relation to context. Our science curriculum is highly ambitious and is designed precisely in response to what pupils, including our high proportion of disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND, need to know and do in order to be successful, ensuring that all pupils make progress every lesson; this links to our core value pride as staff take pride in their science curriculum, which transfers down to all pupils.

As the content selection is precise (with a focus on knowledge needed to enable understanding at each phase, topic and lesson), the science curriculum reflects and exceeds the requirement of the National Curriculum, which promotes our core value of excellence. It deliberately stresses key conceptual knowledge/skills and is precise in when and how this learning will be transferred across other areas, enabling the curriculum to remain demanding and highly engaging for all pupils to align with our high expectations.

In order to bridge the gap, and create a sense of community, between the EYFS and KS1 curriculum, the curriculum is precisely sequenced, so that component skills and knowledge are incrementally progressed across year groups. The curriculum is coherently designed for pupils to experience a well-sequenced, clear path to learning, connecting new knowledge to existing knowledge. Additionally, the science curriculum ensures that pupils progress successfully to their next stages of education and beyond because the curriculum includes precise progression for language acquisition, which is embedded within a deliberate, explicit and systematic framework for teaching vocabulary from EYFS.