Science
All the pupils in the DBCPS community, including SEN and disadvantaged pupils, will participate and learn the following concepts and themes through their journey here.
They will study different science topics throughout their time at DBCPS that will build on previous learning, help them in the future and always engage and excite their learning in the present. To allow children full access to the curriculum at DBCPS we use relevant resources and adapt the teaching style and delivery of the Science curriculum to ensure it meets each individual child’s needs and allow them to make progression according to their abilities.
At DBCPS we aim:
- To teach all children to understand the world around them and how it works
- To develop all children’s curiosity and ability to create and test a theory about how things work
We do this through the following key concepts:
- Hypothesis
- Prediction/Theorising
- Enquiry/Investigation/Fair testing-controlling variables
- Observation
- Analysis
- Comparing/contrasting
- Evaluation
- Generalising
- Scientific laws
By connecting our British Values through the teaching of Science, we explore issues that affect us all in our lives and this helps inform decisions that will shape our future for example, individual liberty where for example in Year 5, they are learning about making healthy lifestyle choices. In Year 4 and 6 they are learning how their choices impact on the environment.
Through scientific investigation we aim to foster pupils’ understanding of content learned and the world around them by testing, analysing and evaluating information gained through testing, generalising and proving the wider implications of the evaluation and finally gaining a deeper understanding of scientific laws. We want pupils to be able to accurately articulate their thoughts and opinions through the acquisition and use of technical and non-technical vocabulary.
In EYFS, we start to explore the world around us, recognising similarities and differences between the natural world and a contrasting world and environment. The pupils will also understand the important processes that take place in the natural world. We use a variety of equipment to help create and lead investigations which follow the children’s own ideas of what they want to learn, for example the interest trays, investigation station, water area to develop the idea of forces with floating and sinking which link to seasons and the light box. Over the year the children will learn about: planting, floating, sinking, changes in the lifecycle of caterpillar, frog and chicken
In Year 1, children learn about seasonal change in Term 2. We chose this as the first Science topic as it is something experience it first-hand. It also connects to their Geography topic where they investigate the weather, meaning they can make good horizontal links in their learning. Pupils begin by looking at the current season using observation skills and simple equipment. Then they build on this by comparing and describing two seasons, collating simple data e.g. a pictogram of different weather. Their next Science topic is Materials. The intent of this unit is to improve and extend children’s scientific vocabulary. Children start to identify and classify by naming the materials that an object is made from. Children then observe these materials closely, comparing and grouping them by their physical properties. This is knowledge they will draw on in Year 2, 4 and 5 when they revisit the materials topic. In Term 5 and 6 children learn about Plants and Animals using their local environment. Children learn to identify the animal groups and name common animals from each group. They develop their skill of identifying and classifying which they draw on every year in science. They learn the names of common British plants and trees and describe their structure. By the end of Year 1 all children have talked about scientific questions and answered them as a class or on their own by performing simple scientific tests.
In Year 2, children build on their knowledge of the human body by learning how babies grow into adults in the human life cycle. The 7 life process are introduced to classify living and non-living things. They begin to perform simple comparative tests to investigate the importance of exercise and hygiene for humans. In Term 3, they use their scientific vocabulary from Year 1 to compare the suitability of everyday materials for their uses. They perform investigations into how materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. In the summer term pupils build on their plant knowledge from Year 1, learning about the life cycle of a sunflower. To find out the needs of plants children grow cress seeds in a variety of conditions. The 7 life processes are revisited to show that plants are living things too. In Term 6 children compare the differences between things that are living, dead and things that have never been alive. They identify and describe local and world habitats and describe how the plants and animals are suited to their habitat. Children create simple food chains and investigate how plants and animals depend on each other for survival.
In Year 3, pupils start learning about light. They learn what a light source is and that we need light to be able to see. Children investigate how light is reflected from surfaces and learn the importance of protecting their eyes from dangerous light from the sun. They perform comparative tests about shadows, how they are formed and how they can be changed to find patterns in the way the size of the shadow changes. In Term 4, children are introduced to rocks and soils. This topic uses the children’s strong knowledge of property vocabulary from KS1 to compare and group different kinds of rocks by their appearance and physical properties. Fossils is introduced in preparation for the evolution topic in Year 6. In Term 5, children are introduced to Forces for the first time. They use the familiar concept of comparing and grouping to investigate how different things move. Carrying out tests to answer their own scientific questions. They investigate magnets and patterns in the way that they behave in relation to each other. In the final term of Year 3, pupils are introduced to the relationship between plant structure and function. They investigate how the stem and roots that they learned about in Year 1, transport water and how the flower plays a part in the life cycle of the plant that they learned in Year 2. Then children build on their learning of humans and animals from Year 2. They continue to learn about the importance of nutrition and link the skeleton and muscles to the body parts they learned in Year 1. They find answers to scientific questions about diet and food groups, comparing and contrasting the diets of different animals (including pets).
In Year 4, children continue this learning about animals including humans. They revise the body parts from Year 3 and are introduced to the parts associated with the digestive system. They ask their own scientific questions to help them understand the special functions of each part. Building on their learning about food chains from Year 2, children perform comparative tests on the teeth of carnivores and herbivores to suggest reasons for the differences, finding out what damages teeth and how to look after them. In Term 3, pupils continue to explore everyday materials, developing simple descriptions of their states of matter, observing the changes to water when it is heated or cooled. Pupils will begin to learn about scientific law, researching the temperature at which materials change state e.g. when does iron or oxygen convert to liquid. This knowledge will be important to help them predict and hypothesise in Year 5 when children learn how materials can be dissolved into or recovered from a solution. In Term 5 children are introduced to electricity for the first time. They focus on constructing simple circuits and drawing them using their own symbols, ready to learn the conventional circuit symbols in Year 6. They evaluate and compare the dangers of using electricity by learning about conductors and insulators. Pupils then look at their local environment and build on their understanding of habitats from Year 2 to study how habitats change throughout the year. Pupils continue to group and classify a wide range of living things that include animals and plants.
In Year 5, children build on their knowledge of living things and their habitats, comparing the life cycles of a frog, a butterfly and an owl. They build on the knowledge of life processes from Year 2 looking closely at how living things reproduce. Building on children’s knowledge of friction and magnetism from Year 3, children in Year 5 study gravity, air resistance and water resistance to explain how these forces change the motion of an object. They develop their knowledge of scientific law to identify the scientific evidence that supports or refutes their arguments. They think about how mechanisms can be used to allow a smaller force to have a greater effect and investigate gears, springs, levers and pulleys using test results to make predictions and making conclusions, relations and explanations. In Term 5 children learn about earth and space. They describe the movement of the earth and other planets and the movement of the moon in relation to the earth. They dray on their knowledge of seasonal change and day length from Year 1 to explain day and night using the Earth’s rotation identifying the scientific evidence that supports or refutes their arguments. In Term 6, they use their prior knowledge of properties of materials to give reasons for their uses. They use their knowledge of electricity from Year 4, planning different types of scientific enquiries, to compare electrical conductors and insulators. To build on their understanding of states of matter, children demonstrate reversible and irreversible changes and give other examples of changes that can or cannot be reversed. They investigate those changes, making systemic and careful observations and recording data in a variety of ways. Children relate their knowledge of life cycles to build on learning from Year 2 about humans including animals. Children build on their understanding that humans have offspring that grow into adults to identify the changes that happen to humans as they develop to old age.
When they get to Year 6, children develop their understanding of humans. Identifying the parts of the circulatory system using scientific evidence to support or refute their ideas. They build on their knowledge of a broad and balanced diet from Science in Year 2 and their cooking and nutrition unit in Year 5 to explain the impact of diet, exercise, drugs and lifecycle on the way their body’s function. This leads them to investigate how nutrients and water are transported within animals and humans. They build on their knowledge of animal groups from Year 1 and classifyanimals into the 5 kingdoms. This prior knowledge is directly transferred into Year 6 where pupils will classify in the same way but on a larger scale by introducing microorganisms, plants and animals. Therefore, prior knowledge of plants in Year 3 and of their Autumn Term Geography topic focusing on Biomes will also need to be applied. Pupils have therefore had the opportunity to embed their learning in their long-term memory. The prior learning undertaken will allow the pupils to identify and classify organisms following the question ‘How can we distinguish organisms based on their characteristics? They learn about the work of Charles Darwin and recognise how living things have changed over time. They investigate how fossils can provide information about living things that inhabited Earth. Their understanding of evolution and inheritance builds on their knowledge of living things and their habitats from Year 2 by learning how animals have adapted to their habitats and whether these adaptions are advantageous or disadvantageous. Within Year 3, pupils will have learnt what a light source is and how shadows are created when a solid object blocks a light source. In Year 6, pupils will need to apply the knowledge they have previously learnt to expand their understanding of light, using the knowledge that light travels in straight lines to carry out a range of investigations. Through this, pupils will use the concept of comparative and fair testing to explore the questions ‘Which material is the best at reflecting light?’ and ‘Which window lets in the most amount of light?’ The pupils will also explore how light travels by making their own periscope. They will develop their scientific drawing by making detailed diagrams of the eye and noting information about how different parts of the eye functions. This will also make links to their prior learning about space from year 5 where the learn about the sun, night and day. This also has cross curricular links to our PSHE lessons in which they learn about the dangers of looking at the sun and how too much sun exposure can be harmful to our skin. n Year 6, pupils would have explored electricity in depth in Year 4 where they would have observed and created simple circuits, discussed what happens if a circuit is not complete and drawn a variety of simple circuits with different components connected. Here this learning will be reinforced by introducing the scientific symbols for each component already used and discussed. Pupils will also use their knowledge of simple circuits to compare and explain variations in how components function. The knowledge that pupils obtained in Year 4 is later applied in DT in Year 5 when they create electronic doodlers. Pupils have again had the opportunity for spaced retrieval to strengthen the neurological pathways. The knowledge learnt will then be applied to the concept of comparative and fair testing, where pupils will investigate the following questions: How will the number of batteries (amounts of Volts) affect the brightness of the bulb?’ and ‘What affects the brightness of a bulb in a circuit?’