At St. Helena’s, our science curriculum is designed to be inspiring and creative, unlocking the potential in every student. We aim to ensure that all learners thrive through challenges and support within a broad and balanced curriculum rooted in shared values and consistently high expectations, striving for excellence. Recognizing children’s natural curiosity, we foster this inquisitive nature through our ambitious science curriculum, which encompasses knowledge acquisition, concepts, scientific skills, and positive values. Through our cohesively planned science curriculum, children develop their knowledge and skills while having opportunities to ask questions about scientific phenomena. We progressively develop scientific skills so that all learners can use a wide range of equipment, conduct experiments, build arguments, and articulate concepts confidently. In our ever-changing world, we educate learners about key environmental issues and their local community, as well as understanding how their bodies work and change. We aim to inspire all learners to confidently ask their own inquiry questions and design their own investigations to find the answers. From Little Explorers’ to Year Six, we strive for every child to achieve excellence and reach their full potential.

Our Science curriculum is implemented by expert teachers who create a positive attitude to science learning and engage children within their classrooms, reinforcing an expectation that all learners can achieve high standards as scientists. Every lesson is personalised to meet the needs of all learners at St Helena’s. Personalisation includes the use of adaptive teaching, links to the village community and our locality (including our beautiful rural countryside local allotment) and purposeful cross curricular links, which are planned and timely to support and strengthen learning. Science in EYFS is underpinned by the Understanding of the World objectives as set out in our personalised EYFS Curriculum. Our St Helena’s EYFS Curriculum relates to the objectives as set out in the Early Learning Goals, with clear progression from Little Explorers’ to the end of Reception. Each Science unit, beginning in Year 1, begins with a pre-assessment of current knowledge and skills, from which a learning sequence is constructed and adapted, meeting the National Curriculum requirements. We involve problem solving opportunities that allow children to discover for themselves, asking big questions along the way. As a scientist, children are encouraged to ask their own questions and be given opportunities to use their scientific skills and research to discover the answers. As well as becoming more proficient in selecting and using scientific equipment, collating, and interpreting results, they become increasingly confident in their growing ability to come to conclusions based on real evidence. Our planned curriculum is progressive in scientific enquiry and working scientifically skills and knowledge, with the discrete teaching of vocabulary at its heart, which is subsequently built upon through our two-year rolling programme of study. We utilise the Grammarsaurus scheme of learning which is adapted to meet our curriculum needs and provides teachers with a clear scaffold for its personalised planning and delivery.

As a Year 6 student transitioning to secondary school, we aim for every learner to have experienced a science curriculum that equips them with the skills and knowledge needed to understand the world around them, while feeling confident to ask deeper scientific questions. Students will recognize how science has transformed our lives and its critical role in the future prosperity of the world. They will be familiar with scientists from diverse backgrounds, and we hope that every student will feel like a scientist, confident in their ability to achieve.