Science Statement of Intent
Intent
At St. Alban's we strongly believe that high quality science education and teaching offers the foundations for understanding the world around us. Science is
ever changing and is fundamental for a prosperous future, which we strive to facilitate and stress the importance of when delivering the teaching of the
processes, methods and knowledge of this vital area. At St Alban's we aim for Science within our school to develop student’s thinking and scientific practices
to enable them to make sense of the world in which they live. We achieve this by ensuring that students are exposed to quality first teaching and real-world
problems by applying scientific skills.
A key element to our teaching is the building of fundamental scientific knowledge and concepts that can be added to and developed each year to allow our
students to advance their rational thinking skills in addition to developing a sense of curiosity and excitement about science. Students are encouraged to
understand how science can be used to explain, predict, analyse, observe or record. Science in our school is about developing our student’s ideas and
scientific thinking by allowing them to investigate and study the environment and world around them with a balanced and broad science programme of
study.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in science, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout our school. Science teaching at St.
Alban's strives to adapt and extend the curriculum to match all pupils’ needs. Staff are provided with a scheme of work and teaching sequence to follow,
however, this can be adapted to suit the needs of the children and environmental factors. Science is taught consistently in standalone lessons once a week,
but is discretely taught in many different contexts throughout all areas of the curriculum.
At St. Alban's we ensure that all students are exposed to rich learning experiences that aim to:
• Make links between science and other subjects.
• Build on our student’s natural curiosity and develop a scientific approach to solving problems.
• Help develop and extend our student’s scientific concept of the world they live in.
• Develop the use of scientific language and vocabulary, recording and techniques.
• Develop in pupils a general sense of enquiry, which encourages them to question and make suggestions.
• Encourage open-mindedness, self-assessment, resilience and developing the key scientific skills including: observing, measuring, predicting,
hypothesising, experimenting, communicating, interpreting, explaining and evaluating.
Impact
The impact and measure of this is to ensure students not only acquire the appropriate age-related knowledge linked to the science curriculum, but also
skills which equip them to progress from their starting points, and within their everyday lives. St Alban's aim for science is to increase the skills needed to
navigate an ever-changing world of science and technology by immersing our students with scientific enquiry skills, key scientific knowledge and
investigative skills.