INTENT

Welcome to Brockmoor Primary School, where our children are budding SCIENTISTS!

Our primary intention is to provide each child with a comprehensive and well-rounded Science curriculum that empowers them to confidently explore and discover the wonders around them, fostering a profound understanding of the world we inhabit.

We aspire to cultivate a genuine love for science within our students, instilling in them limitless ambitions. We hope they grow up aspiring to become astronauts, forensic scientists, toxicologists, or microbiologists.

To realise these ambitions, our approach involves exciting, hands-on experiences that fuel curiosity and encourage questioning. Our goal is for these stimulating and challenging encounters to help each child firmly grasp and expand their scientific knowledge and vocabulary while nurturing a passion and eagerness for learning.

We want our children to not only learn from their science lessons at Brockmoor but also to fondly cherish those memories and eagerly embrace the scientific opportunities that come their way!

At Brockmoor, we follow the CUSP science methodology. Through this approach, pupils progressively become more adept as they navigate the curriculum, accumulating, connecting, and making sense of the rich substantive and disciplinary knowledge.

Substantive knowledge encompasses subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to delve into the content. Common misconceptions are explicitly addressed as non-examples and positioned against known and accurate content. In CUSP science, an extensive and interconnected knowledge base is constructed to enable students to use these foundations and integrate them with existing knowledge. Misconceptions are carefully challenged within the context of substantive and disciplinary knowledge. In CUSP Science, introducing misconceptions too early is discouraged, as students need to construct a mental model to position new knowledge effectively.

Disciplinary knowledge involves understanding how to collect, use, interpret, comprehend, and evaluate evidence from scientific processes. This aspect is explicitly taught.

Scientific analysis is honed through the IPROF criteria, which we refer to as 'Thinking Scientifically.' This involves:

• Identifying and classifying
• Pattern seeking
• Research
• Observing over time
• Fair and comparative testing

IMPLEMENTATION

CUSP Science is structured on the principles of cumulative knowledge. This cumulative model has a profound impact, providing opportunities for children to make associations and connections with significant periods of time, people, places, and events.

What do we teach?

EARLY YEARS

The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum enhances children's comprehension of Science through the planning and delivery of 'Understanding the World.' In this phase, children explore objects, materials, and living things using all of their senses, examining similarities, differences, patterns, and change. The environment, coupled with skilled practitioners, nurtures curiosity and encourages explorative play. Children are motivated to pose questions about why things happen and how things work. Our approach encourages children to utilize their natural surroundings for exploration.

Outdoors, children delight in investigating mini-beasts and their habitats, observing the changing seasons, plants, and animals. During the spring term, children enjoy a unique firsthand experience of hatching and caring for live chicks. Additionally, children actively participate in cookery and baking sessions, providing them with an opportunity to witness changes in state as ingredients are mixed, heated, and cooled.

Overview

KEY STAGE 1

In Key Stage 1, pupils delve into the study of Seasons, fostering an early conceptual understanding of the transition from day to night. This exploration of change over time seamlessly links to the examination of plants, with a specific focus on trees. This emphasis allows children to recognise trees as integral to the plant kingdom and observe the transformations deciduous trees undergo in tandem with the changing seasons.

In a contrasting exploration, pupils delve into the realm of animals, including humans. Non-examples of plants are employed to highlight and contrast the distinctive features of animals.

Pupils are introduced to the identification and classification of materials. Scientific terminology, such as transparent, translucent, and opaque, is explicitly taught through vocabulary instruction. Pupils then solidify their understanding by applying these terms to their existing knowledge, further reinforcing these concepts through scientific tasks. This substantive knowledge is enriched as pupils seamlessly integrate disciplinary knowledge acquired through scientific enquiry.

Within the broader exploration of Living Things and Their Habitats and the Uses of Everyday Materials, pupils construct new substantive knowledge. This knowledge is then comprehensively assimilated through the application of Working and Thinking Scientifically tasks.

LOWER KEY STAGE 2

The module on rocks is explored, building on previous knowledge acquired from 'Everyday materials' in KS1. A comprehensive study of Animals, including humans, expands on the foundation laid in KS1, contrasting physical features with the functions they perform, such as the examination of the skeleton and muscles.

The rocks unit is revisited to refine and deepen pupils’ understanding, further advancing their knowledge.

Forces and magnets are introduced, aligning with KS1 materials and encompassing concepts like twisting, bending, and squashing. Contact and non-contact forces are taught, and understanding is applied through Working and Thinking Scientifically. The abstract concept of light is made tangible by exploring light sources and shadows. Plants are scrutinised to cultivate a more sophisticated understanding of their parts and functions, including the intricate process of pollination.

A focused study of Living Things and Their Habitats pays meticulous attention to classification, directly incorporating prior knowledge to ensure the establishment of secure conceptual frameworks. This study interconnects animals, plants, and environments, with a summarised emphasis on positive and negative changes.

Electricity is introduced, with pupils acquiring understanding about electrical sources, safety, and components of a single-loop circuit.

The Animals, including humans segment concentrates on the sequence of digestion, tracing the process from the mouth to excretion.

States of matter and sound are taught, drawing on the particle theory. Practical scientific tasks and tests assist pupils in building a coherent understanding of the particle theory by applying their knowledge through structured scientific enquiry.

UPPER KEY STAGE 2

Pupils employ and build upon their comprehension of states of matter in the exploration of properties and changes of materials.

Change is further examined within animals, including humans, with a focus on the growth and development of both humans and animals.

Earth in space advances the conceptual understanding of our position in the universe.

A detailed study of Forces refines the substantive knowledge acquired in KS1 and LKS2. To enhance this study, pupils delve into the life and work of Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), considered the father of modern science.

Living things and their habitats centre on variations in the life cycles of living things and their reproductive processes. This study also juxtaposes previous scientific perspectives.

A comprehensive exploration of living things and their habitats empowers pupils in UKS2 to revisit and expand their understanding of classification, following the taxonomy devised by Carl Linnaeus. More intricate animals are examined.

Light is revisited and taught with advanced substantive knowledge. This physics study focuses on the properties of light rather than the biology of the eye.

How do pupils learn

• Class timetables have been built to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum.  

• Subjects have been blocked in a spaced retrieval model to support catch up and to build the frequency of science and wider curriculum subjects. This maximises learning time. 

An essential component to CUSP lessons is the systematic and coherent approach that we embed focusing on the six phases of a lesson.

OVERVIEW OF KNOWLEDGE 

Each unit includes an overview for the teacher which details the big idea that pupils will be studying, prior knowledge, skills to be taught and common misconceptions.  

MAPPING OF KNOWLEDGE

The sequence of learning makes clear essential and desirable knowledge, key questions and task suggestions for each lesson and suggested cumulative quizzing questions.

KNOWLEDGE ORGANISERS

Dual coded knowledge organisers contain core information for children to easily access and use as a point of reference and as a means of retrieval practise. 

KNOWLEDGE NOTES

Knowledge notes are an elaboration in the core knowledge found in knowledge organisers. 

Knowledge notes focus pupils’ working memory to the key question that will be asked at the end of the lesson.  It reduces cognitive load and avoids the split-attention effect.