Science subject statement:

We have organised our science curriculum into four unique vertical themes of Being Human, Earth’s Origins, Local Habitats and Materials and Technology. These themes are designed to develop schemas that will allow our children to understand and interpret their world by building upon what is already known.  We have given careful thought to organising the National Curriculum for science so that it will make sense to our children through the broad scientific narratives of our four vertical themes.

We want our children to make sense of their world through the eyes of science. Our science teaching provides our children with a detailed and well thought out science curriculum with sequential scientific knowledge at its core. We have planned specific investigations to ensure that our children engage with the full range of science investigations. The four vertical scientific themes that form part of our whole school 3D curriculum, give our children depth and breadth of key scientific narratives that shape all of us and our world.

Our approach to teaching and learning at Ashcombe strives for knowledge acquisition that is remembered. This is the reason why we have ensured that learning objectives return to previous knowledge and build upon what is already known.  Our science curriculum has been planned with horizontal and diagonal links to our geography curriculum as we strive for coherence, promote remembering and build schema. These are the fundamental reasons for our whole school 3D curriculum.

We have given careful thought to providing local context to our science curriculum as we want our children to begin their understanding of our world by being enlightened by the immediate world on their doorstep. We want them to understand and value their local area. We want them to gain respect for the nature of which they are a part and understand both the positive and negative impact that they can have. As they and their world grows we want the initial spark of scientific discovery of their local area to ignite within them and stay with them for life as their world grows.

Our carefully selected whole school scientific themes and detailed prescriptive science units within each year group ensure that knowledge acquisition and investigation is never left to chance. Year group content is guaranteed. This guarantee of our 3D curriculum, developed by us, allows our teachers and learners to refer back to and build upon prior knowledge learnt and previous investigations in previous academic years, a powerful tool to acquire powerful scientific knowledge. Where possible we have built in what we believe is additional and essential knowledge that is pertinent to our children and their community, the world at large and the times we live in. We have designed our science curriculum to give our children what we believe is the most pertinent knowledge and how to find out about it in a scientific way.

Science Progression