SCIENCE CURRICULUM AIMS at GIA

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy experiences are at the heart of all learning where children have ‘hands on’ learning opportunities through real life objects, visitors or visits. Children are immersed in thematic learning based on an interleaving curriculum where new knowledge is taught, learned, remembered, revisited and applied by children ‘being’, for example being a Scientist.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we believe that language development is vital for all children. We have high aspirations and support them to ‘be’ in their learning. The experiential and interleaving approach ensures that language is used by all stakeholders, including parents. Children develop good comprehension of the words they are using and are able to use them in context and accurately as part of their real learning.

We are a ‘talk rich’ school: talk is central to our curriculum and to the way our pupils learn. Children learn through talk. We believe oracy (the ability to communicate effectively) is a central means of extending pupils’ linguistic, social, emotional and cognitive development; it is key to the progress and attainment of all pupils across all areas of the curriculum.

Retrieval practice is planned for across every subject and year group in the form of “speak like an expert.” Every lesson children are expected to retrieve learning previously taught to move learning from the short term to the long-term memory.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we aim to develop and encourage children’s natural curiosity so that they can become confident and enthusiastic scientists:- posing questions, observing and recording, evaluating their findings and investigation. We believe that children should be given concrete learning opportunities to develop these.

To create:

• Successful learners who enjoy learning, make at least expected progress with some children making better than expected progress to achieve excellence.
• Confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.
• Responsible citizens who can make a positive contribution to society.
• Competent scientists with plenty of “hands on” investigations and experiments: finding out from first-hand experience and testing hypotheses, in line with “working scientifically”

• A progressive and coherently planned curriculum which engages children in authentic learning experiences that reflect the individual needs of all children, including disadvantaged and pupil premium, ensuring no child is left behind.
• Successful learners who build upon previous learning in order to access new disciplinary and procedural knowledge, retrieving learning and applying it in different contexts. 

It is essential that the Science curriculum is organised in such a way that it provides learners with the opportunity to learn expected behaviours and be successful in their learning so that we can deliver our mission and aims.

Strategic Intent

The breadth and depth of the curriculum is designed to:

• Create an aspirational high achievement culture which allows pupils to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
• Provide a progressive, coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to key concepts, ideas and knowledge expecting children to apply this through a variety of experiences and planned learning opportunities;
•  To provide cultural capital, so children have a deep understanding, respect and tolerance of the world around them;
• Take in to account individual needs and styles where ALL children experience success;
• To prepare all pupils for the opportunities of the Science curriculum through the disciplinary and procedural knowledge.  

Aspirational high achievement culture

We have developed two curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school, and respond to the particular needs of our community:

• Aspirations – which help pupils to know their future possibilities and build aspirations for their lives.
• Experiences – The school provides memorable experiences which help children to engage actively in their learning by providing real ‘hands on’ experiences, supported by exploration and investigation to make links and sense of their learning, supplemented by shared experiences provided by visitors and visits to the wider community, to link to the wider world.

Coherently planned academic curriculum

Underpinned by our two curriculum drivers our academic curriculum sets out:

• A clear breadth of topics and outcomes that will be covered
• The disciplinary and procedural knowledge that children will learn
• Criteria for understanding the progression and sequences of learning and concepts to support retention of key knowledge
• Criteria for depth of understanding through retrieval practice and new knowledge.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning from what they read. It includes vocabulary which, in turn, helps pupils to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way.

Individuals

The curriculum is designed for all children to maximise their potential through carefully planned and targeted teaching, where assessment for learning provides vital intelligence on what the next steps need to be for individuals to succeed in their learning. Pre-teaching and Same Day Intervention are two strategies that are consistently applied across school to support children to experience success. The developmental progressive curriculum is designed to maximise individual needs, strengths and their next steps are used to build upon to ensure no child, including those who are pupil premium or disadvantaged fall behind. Home learning is planned in line with the progressive and developmental curriculum in school. Sticky knowledge and vocabulary are an integral part of the home learning so that children do not fall behind whilst at home.

Sustained Mastery

Nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils’ long term memory. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed, in the short term. Assessment therefore answers two main questions: How well are pupils coping with the curriculum content? And how well are they retaining previously taught content? This is assessed throughout the lesson on a daily basis through assessment for learning where children’s understanding of key concepts is revisited, feedback is given and acted upon and has it been remembered is checked in future learning. “Speak like an expert” is a feature at the beginning of every lesson whereby every child is expected to retrieve previous taught knowledge and skills. Children are expected to use subject specific vocabulary to communicate their understanding and shift learning the long term memory.

The impact of the curriculum is assessed at 3 assessment points:

• Assessment point 1 – 28th November 2022
• Assessment point 2 – 13th March 2023
• Assessment point 3 – 10th July 2023

This will support teachers to highlight clear next steps for individuals and support leaders in school in their professional dialogue around progress, CPD, subject knowledge, outcomes and lines of enquiry to follow. Impact of the curriculum is triangulated through skills, knowledge and the ability to communicate the learning.

Curriculum Implementation

• Clear planned pathway to progress from on entry to nursery to the end of key stage 1 and beyond, accelerating progress in all sequences of learning.
  • Learning is most effective with spaced repetition
  • Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long term retention.
  • Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.
• Children will experience and observe phenomena, looking more closely at the natural and humanly constructed world around them.
• Children will be encouraged to be curious and ask questions about what they notice. They will be expected to develop their understanding of scientific ideas by using different types of scientific enquiry to answer their own questions, this will include observing changes over a period of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative tests, and finding things out using secondary sources of information.
• British Science Week is celebrated annually as a whole school and whole school theme days are planned and delivered every term. These allow children to be fully immersed in cross curricular, memorable experience based learning that includes visits/visitors and learning centred on Science.
• ‘Speak like an expert’ is explicitly planned into every lesson to support daily and weekly retrieval practice where learning moves from the short term to longer term memory, with an emphasis on the development of children’s vocabulary.
• ‘Sticky knowledge’ is key to ensure lessons are learning focused, “sticky knowledge” is planned in a progressive way and shared with parents to enable links to be made at home. This allows children to confidently communicate their learning as a Scientist.
• There should be depth before breadth.  Maximise learning time in all subjects and consider the subject knowledge and vocabulary required.
• Application of knowledge from English and Mathematics are expected to be used in Science, especially harnessing Reading as a tool for independent learning across the curriculum.
• Targeted support and additional challenge to ensure all learners make at least national rates of progress from their starting points and over time.
• Ensure all students’ progress is in line with national expectations and learners and their teachers are ambitious to achieve more through deeper learning opportunities.
• Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach where children are applying their learning from a variety of contexts demonstrating their learning has been retained long term.
• Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practise for previously learned content. For example, seasonal change in science is taught as a daily routine with comparisons to other parts of the world.
• Suspended learning in blocks of time where core principles in a range of curriculum areas including, healthy week, Science week,  RE, SMSC & PSHE, Heritage weeks, Creative week allow children to spend a focussed block of time immersed in a depth of knowledge linked to all subject areas.
• To support induction and transition points across the Primary years for all learners and their carers
• The curriculum is further enriched and boosted through the wide variety of after curricular activities that are available for the infant children including sports clubs, craft and creative clubs, cooking, computing and coding club. All children are invited to attend the clubs through an open invitation and specific children, including our most identified vulnerable children are contacted individually to ensure they are involved in at least one of our clubs.

The Curriculum

We have a very broad Primary Curriculum covering 12 subjects meeting all the national curriculum requirements.

The teaching and learning of Science encompasses:-

• Working scientifically, whereby children ask questions and recognise they can be answered in a variety of ways.
• Carrying out simple tests and observing closely.
• Using their observations and ides to suggest answers to questions.
• Identifying and classifying.
• Using data in order to help children answer questions.

All of this procedural knowledge is  used across a range of programmes of study. Children are expected to transfer this knowledge  and communicate to an audience both verbally, in written forms or using a variety of other tools and resources  using the correct scientific vocabulary.

Children will be engaging in concrete learning opportunities learning across the science curriculum

Sequential learning sequences with clear planned learning objectives for all Science  lessons allows children to build on prior knowledge  both at school and as part of home learning.  A progressive  and coherent curriculum ensures that current learning opportunities are based upon children’s previous learning, knowledge they have retained from previous lessons or the previous year group and links to year group expectations.

Spacing and interleaving of Science topics ensures children knowledge is transferred from their short term memory to their long term memory and also seek meaningful connections during concept learning.

‘Sticky knowledge’ is carefully planned for each lesson across the curriculum, linked to the learning objective, and is progressive across a sequence of learning. This ensures that children are explicitly clear about what they are learning during each session and how previous learning will help them to develop new knowledge and skills. Children’s learning is communicated to them clearly to allow them to develop an understanding of why they are being taught what they are being taught at that particular time; how previous learning will help them and what the learning intentions are at the end of the sequence. ‘Sticky knowledge’ also provides children with the correct vocabulary and terminology needed in order to effectively communicate their learning. This is also an integral part of home learning to ensure children do not fall behind whilst at home.

Home learning opportunities have been carefully planned and resourced, to ensure children receive the same carefully planned and progressive curriculum that is on offer at school. All children have a right to an education and we will not allow any child to fall behind. There is an expectation that home learning is shared with class teachers to ensure progress is being made. Children will be expected to share their learning with their class teacher via Tapestry or Class Dojo. Children will receive bespoke feed-back in response to their learning, in line with what they would receive in school, to ensure that excellent progress is being made and the ‘even better if’ culture that is being developed in school is being consistently applied and instilled in all pupils.  

A variety of strategies are taught at GIA in order to allow ALL pupils to become successful scientists, not all children learn in the same way. This ensures that no children, including pupil premium and disadvantaged are left behind and achieve their full learning potential.  

Additional support is provided for children who are not meeting their targets through bespoke small group intervention led by highly skilled professionals. This is monitored through pupil progress meetings and SMART targets to ensure the impact of the intervention is as anticipated in a timely manner. 

Suspended learning – When the normal lesson timetable is suspended, take place during the year. These days/weeks  allow children to learn in different ways such as off site, with external providers or using different curriculum approaches. These days’ and weeks cover subjects such as Healthy Week, Children’s Mental Health Week and Science Week.

Curriculum Impact

Curriculum Impact

The impact of the curriculum is that by the end of the year, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they know more, remember more and do more. Some children will have reached a greater depth of understanding where they can apply their learning.

Children are clear about their learning and can communicate in a variety of different contexts and for a variety of purposes and audience as a scientist. Children can confidently communicate their learning as a scientist verbally, in the written form or using a variety of tools and resources including the use of digital technology, using accurate vocabulary. A developmentally progressive curriculum, whereby children build upon they prior learning and knowledge, ensures that no child, including pupil premium and disadvantaged, are left behind. All children have the tools to reach their full learning potential.