The Science Curriculum at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art.”

At St Robert Bellarmine, we believe that high-quality science education provides the foundations for understanding the world through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.  Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and all pupils are taught the essential aspects of knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. Through building up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts, pupils are encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about the natural world. They are encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave and analyse causes.

Our Intended Science Curriculum

Our science curriculum is built around the aims and objectives set out in the national curriculum. We aim for the science curriculum content to be remembered in the long term as our basic principles are that learning only takes place if there is a change in the long-term memory.

Our science curriculum takes a mastery approach. Our mastery approach is to ensure that all pupils have mastered key concepts before moving on to the next topic: it is knowledge led, (subject specific) and it focuses on the development if pupils’ long-term memory for fluency, which in turn, develops pupils’ ability to reason and deepen knowledge and understanding.

Science is taught as a discrete subject. Planning for learning carefully maps out the progression of knowledge and understanding, that fully covers the National Curriculum. Teachers are clear on the ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember and this forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. The key knowledge is connected by reference to golden threads or substantive concepts and disciplinary knowledge. Both are linked and rely upon each other. For instance, pupils use disciplinary knowledge when working scientifically, to help them acquire new substantive knowledge or adapt their thinking.

The ‘key knowledge’ that we want our pupils to know and remember forms the basis of long-term planning for progression. This includes the ‘substantive concepts’ of:

Foundations in Biology - animals, including humans, living things and their habitats, plants, evolution and inheritance.

Foundations in Chemistry – materials.  

Foundations in Physics - forces and energy.

Foundations of Earth Science - Earth and space and seasonal change.

It also includes the ‘disciplinary knowledge’ of asking scientific questions, planning an enquiry, observing closely, taking measurements, gathering and recording results, presenting & explaining results, explaining scientific knowledge, sorting and grouping, defining and classifying, constructing and annotating diagrams, making predictions (KS2), drawing conclusions (KS2) and evaluating an enquiry (KS2).

Curriculum breadth for science outlines the core knowledge for each topic around which teachers have developed a coherent and deliberately sequenced curriculum to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge and understanding to further develop the substantive concepts and disciplinary knowledge building upon prior knowledge (including their experiential knowledge).

Curriculum depth in science allows for children to progress in their knowledge by first remembering more, progressing to knowing more which they can then draw on as they learn to reason and explain.

We understand how important academic and subject specific vocabulary is in the acquisition of knowledge. Consequently, teachers ensure that this is planned for and taught rigorously throughout science topics.

We determine progress as 'remembering more and knowing more'. We believe that when new knowledge and existing knowledge connect in pupils’ minds, this gives rise to understanding.  We look for children, as their knowledge and understanding develops, to show that they can make connections, draw parallels and use increasingly sophisticated explanations which draw upon their scientific knowledge.

Our Enacted Science Curriculum

Our science curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback for our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Cognitive science tells us that for pupils to have a greater depth of understanding and sustain mastery they must first master the basics, which takes time.

A coherent and deliberately sequenced science curriculum ensures that we practise things repeatedly, so children get better at them, and we revise things on a regular basis so that they don’t forget them.

Our Learnt Science Curriculum

The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• Are our pupils developing a fluent understanding of the curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is they remember more and are fluent in it. Activities are planned for pupils to combine this remembered knowledge and fluency with the opportunities to create, reason and demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.