Key Stage 1
Science is taught at KS1 to gain in knowledge, skills and understanding and to stimulate a child’s natural curiosity about how the world works. Through practical investigations, tests, comparisons and responding to and asking questions the children write, draw and communicate their ideas using scientific language, charts and tables.
Topics:
Ourselves
Electricity
Variation (animals and plants)
Forces and Movements including magnets
Grouping and Changing Materials
Health and Growth
Growing Plants
Weather
This includes KS1 children joining Year 3 and 4 on a field trip to Robinswood Hill.
Key Stage 2
In Key Stage 2 a specialist teacher is employed to teach one-hour lessons twice weekly to each year group. At present, years 3 and 4 are taught together. They are given the opportunity to develop their natural curiosity through a wide range of activities. The work followed is based on the national curriculum and over the two years topics covered include:
| Teeth and eating | Moving and growing |
| Helping Plants Grow Well | Habitats |
| Characteristics of materials | Keeping Warm |
| Rocks and Solids | Solids and Liquids |
| Magnets and Springs | Friction |
| Light and Shadows | Circuits and Conductors |
Homework is set once a week and the children are assessed at the end of each topic of work.
In years 5 and 6 the children are taught in separate year groups where the work is based on the common entrance syllabus.
Over the two year period the children cover a wide variety of activities drawn from three broad areas of scientific knowledge.
1. Life Processes and Living Things - this includes studying the human body, plants and their requirements and the study of plants and animals in their habitat.
2. Materials and their properties - this includes work on investigating different materials and their suitability to different jobs, changing materials, dissolving, separating mixtures, rusting, the water cycle and water drainage. It also includes looking at the structure of solids, liquids and gases.
3. Physical Properties - this includes electricity, light, forces and sound.
Within these three broad areas of knowledge, the children are taught scientific enquiry skills. This includes developing their skills in planning, obtaining and presenting evidence and considering and evaluating their evidence.
The children in year 5 and 6 are set homework once a week. They are assessed at the end of each topic and receive a more formal end of year assessment.
