The teaching of science at Laurel Avenue Community Primary, is designed to aid teachers to help pupils build a science schema within their long-term memories. Rather than memorising isolated facts, building a strong science schema enables pupils to organise knowledge in a meaningful way.
As a school we map
• Breadth of study - the topics the pupils will study
• Threshold concepts - the big ideas in science that pupils will explore through every topic (working scientifically; biology: understand plants, understand animals and humans, investigate living things and understand evolution and inheritance; chemisty: investigate materials; physics: understand movement, forces and magnets, understand the Earth’s movement in space, investigate light and seeing, investigate sound and hearing and understand electrical circuits).
• Milestones - the goals that pupils should reach to show they are meeting the expectations of the curriculum.
Milestones are the goals that pupils are aiming for; through developing a strong schema based on knowledge, vocabulary and tasks pupils progress through the milestones.
Pupils with SEND are given full access to the science curriculum. Teachers use a range of strategies to enable all pupils to become successful historians including:
• Discrete teaching of vocabulary to ensure all pupils access and use scientific terminology
• Pre-teaching where appropriate for example: sharing texts with a pupil prior to the lesson
• Dual coding to help pupils efficiently learn key concepts
• Thinking maps and mind mapping to enable pupils to organise and memorise key knowledge.