At The Rushmere Park Academy, we bring science to life with practical and engaging Science lessons that promote inquiry and curiosity. We have our Principles of Science that underpin our planning and teaching of Science across the school. Having these Principles of Science at the forefront of our science provision means we have children who can generate their own questions, lead their own science investigations, and use scientific language to explain their findings.

The Principles of Science are:

• Developing Scientific skills and knowledge through practical ‘hands on’ enquiry
• Exploration with variety of resources
• Purposeful, engaging and meaningful to all learners
• Inspirational for all learners
• Access to greater depth thinking, fostering natural curiosity.
• Use our natural environment

We cover a wide range of topics from Early year to Year 4 using the National Curriculum as our inspiration. The National Curriculum states that pupils should experience and observe phenomena by looking closely at the natural and human world around them. This is at the heart of our science curriculum and goes hand in hand with pupils being given the opportunity to work scientifically, through practical activities, to investigate the world around them and to create their own questions and find their own scientific discoveries. Children have the independence to use their knowledge to plan their own investigations and use their findings to inform what they want to discover next. Through this, children develop their scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding as well as a sense of ownership of their scientific work and how they record and present that work.

For continuity, across the phases in our school topics are revisited to provide a deeper understanding so that pupils can develop and extend learning from previous years.  The topics covered across the school are:

• Animals, Including Humans
• Everyday Materials/ Properties and Changes of Materials
• Seasonal Changes
• Living Things and Their Habitats
• Plants
• Rocks
• Light
• Electricity
• Sound
• Magnets and Forces
• Earth and Space