SCIENCE

At Ashperton Primary Academy we aim to inspire our pupils to develop a love for Science. We seek to harness their curiosity in the world around them and create opportunities for awe and wonder. Our Science curriculum, which includes the National Curriculum, is ambitious for all pupils. It seeks to be knowledge-rich, equipping children with the technical vocabulary and information with which they can explore, discuss and investigate. It strives to equip children with a wide range of transferable scientific skills which they can use at school, at home and in their future education. We aim share with children our passion for Science, sharing interesting discoveries, posing intriguing questions and sharing real-world application. We strive to equip children for their next steps in education as well as develop their awareness of opportunities in Science beyond education.

Our Science Curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics.
• develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of Science through different types of Science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
• are equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of Science, today and for the future.

In addition to this, we seek to help pupils:

• learn about the world in a way that encourages them to become caring people, who respect all living things and the non-living environment.
• develop skills and understanding that equips them to begin to understand the way things work in a rapidly changing world and the community that they live.
• develop an enquiring mind and a scientific approach to investigating.
• begin to develop an appreciation of the uses and implications that Science has on people in the environment today and in the future.
• develop their communication skills, gaining a range of skills for communicating their scientific ideas including scientific language, drawings, charts, tables and use of ICT.
• teach pupils to work in a systematic way, to evaluate evidence and consider whether tests or comparisons are fair.
• develop their curiosity and an open-minded attitude to learning and investigating.
• learn how to apply relevant mathematical skills, to support scientific enquiry.
• develop a wide repertoire of scientific vocabulary with which to discuss, ask questions and explain.
• develop transferable enquiry skills for future education and employment

We enrich our curriculum with a wide range of activities in addition to our weekly Science lessons. In the past this has regularly included,

• Whole School Celebration of British Science Week each March
• External visitors such as ecologists Nigel Hand and governor John Taylor
• External visitors bringing animals for observation and Q&A such as reindeers, sheep and hedgehogs
• Cultivating our school garden, each class developing a bed, growing produce, observing plant life cycles
• An after-school Science Club
• A visit for year 2 to the Morgan Factory - engineering link
• Raising and caring for egg/chicks in year 2
• A visit for year 3 to Bristol Zoo
• A visit for year 4 to Compton Verney (Environmental Science) and Cadbury's World (material changes)
• A visit for year 5 to We The Curious Science Museum including a chemistry workshop and planetarium show
• A Mitsubishi Energy Project in year 6
• First Aid Mini Medics workshop in year 6