Great Tey Primary
SchoolScience
Our science curriculum is based on the National Curriculum, and we make the most of our fantastic outdoor spaces, woodland area and access to nature to fully bring our science learning to life! In 2019, we purchased the Cornerstones Curriculum as the basis of our science curriculum in order to ensure we fully cover all of the requirements of the National Curriculum and to provide a means of assessing children's confidence and learning. We adapt this curriculum to our school by taking every opportunity to move our learning outside, observing and exploring the natural world and by using trips, visits and special days to develop children's love of science.
Please read on below to find more information on what we teach, how we teach it and how we ensure we are creating scientists of the future!
Why do we learn science?
We are creating future scientists by ....
- developing children's interest in, and curiosity about, the world around them
- ensuring children have opportunities to ask and answer questions about their world through exploring, observing, measuring and testing
- revisiting key skills and knowledge across the primary years to ensure children's scientific understanding is embedded and can be used in different contexts
- equipping children with the scientific knowledge they need to understand the importance of science to their lives today and in the future
- developing children's ability to make predictions, interpret their findings, record results and report back on what they have found with increasing accuracy and confidence
- introducing children to the wide range of jobs scientists can do and nurturing their ambitions to work in science-based jobs in the future, contributing to their communities and the wider world
What do we learn?
Whole School Curriculum Map
Our Whole School Curriculum Map for Geography can be found here: Year A Year B. It shows how different skills will be developed over your child's time at Great Tey.
(To decide which year we are in, A or B, years starting in an 'odd' year - September 2023, 2025 etc. - are Year A, years beginning in an 'even' year - September 2022, 2024 etc. - are Year B.)
Class Maps
Please see below for our Class Maps, which give further information on skills development in your child's class through our Cornerstones topics.
Click on your child's class and year group below for Science Cycle A covering the year 2023-2024
Ducklings - Reception (Blocks A and B are the same for Reception)
Click on your child's class and year group below for Science Cycle B covering the year 2022-2023 / 2024-2025
Ducklings - Reception (Blocks A and B are the same for Reception)
What does our learning in science help us to do?
- develop our understanding of the world around us
- ask and answer questions, developing our ability to ask questions of increasing relevance
- develop our scientific vocabulary to report our findings with increasing clarity, to answer questions and to justify the conclusions we have come to based on the evidence
- understand the importance of evidence, fair tests and research when answering questions
- make connections
- use and construct classification systems and represent data in a variety of ways so that we can compare and contrast materials or living things in a systematic way
- prepare for our future, whether working in a science-based career or understanding our bodies and our health