When planning our curriculum as a department we have tried to focus on what skills and concepts students at our school need to develop into excellent scientists but also what engages our students and prepares them for any career their wish to pursue in the future.
Fundamentally we want our students to be active scientists who plan, conduct and research their own hypotheses. We want them to be able to follow methods, recognise correct apparatus, use safe working procedures and analyse primary and secondary data to draw conclusions.
We choose to explicitly teach drawing graph skills, units and conversions, applying and rearranging formula. We believe that to be truly excellent scientists our students need advanced skills in Mathematics to support this. We liaise with the Maths department to ensure that methodology is consistent across departments.
We try to develop student’s skills at articulately complex and extended explanations of scientific concepts to heighten and illustrate their understanding of a topic. We encourage our students to use high level scientific vocabulary in their work and correct misuse of literacy in student work.
Above all we think it’s really important that our students see the benefits of learning science and how it affects them on a day-to-day basis. We try to include as many opportunities for learning outside of the classroom as possible. Our very popular STEM club focuses on different real world projects every half term, as well as taking students on careers trips to places including the Siemen’s Engineering Crystal, the Greenwich Observatory and the Natural History Museum. We also arrange in school visits and activities to engage pupils further such as our annual Chick development project and visits from Ecology and reptile experts. We also have an extended programme of activities for national science week.
Please click on the link below to see our Programme of Study for Science: