Science

Science Curriculum

Our aim is for every child to leave St Nicholas at the end of Year 6 with a deeper understanding of a wide range of scientific ideas. Children will be given opportunities to enjoy, confidently explore and discover the world around them. Exciting, practical, hands-on experiences will encourage curiosity and questioning, laying the foundations for future studies. Exploration opportunities, talking about their ideas and answering questions will ensure a continually evolving knowledge of scientific language, to be confident in both written and verbal responses. Children will encounter more abstract concepts and begin to recognise how these ideas help them to understand and predict how the world operates. They should also begin to recognise that scientific ideas change and develop over time. Pupils will be able to draw conclusions based on their data and observations, use evidence to justify their theories, using scientific knowledge and understanding to explain their findings.

• Year 1 – Seasonal Changes, Animals including humans, Materials, Plants
• Year 2 – Living things and their habitats, Animals including humans, Materials, Plants
• Year 3 – Rocks, Food, Our Bodies, Light, Forces and Magnets, Plants
• Year 4 – Sound, Electricity, Living Things, States of Matter, Teeth and Eating (The Digestive System)
• Year 5 – Forces, Changes in Materials, Circle of Life, Growing Up and Growing Old, Earth and Space
• Year 6 – The Circulatory System, Light, Evolution, Classification, Electricity

The national curriculum for science aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
• develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
• are equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.