Science
Philosophy and aimsHere at Whitefield Primary Academy, we believe that the teaching of science stimulates and excites children’s curiosity and enables them to understand their world and to explain phenomena within it. It should also encourage a sense of awe and wonder, regarding their world. We believe that pupils require an appropriate and effective, broad and balanced programme of scientific education, in line with the National Curriculum. Here at Whitefield, science is an integral part of our integrated curriculum, with our books providing, where possible, natural links to science.
The teaching of science should offer opportunities for children to develop knowledge and understanding of important scientific ideas, processes/skills and relate these to everyday experiences and events. Children require activities that enable them to think, explore and communicate ideas. We want children to explore values and attitudes through science, including the promotion of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Our aims:
- Encourage children to be curious about things they observe, and experience and explore the world about them with all their senses.
- Use this experience to develop their understanding of key scientific ideas and make links between different phenomena and experiences.
- Begin to think about models as a way of representing things they cannot directly experience.
- Try to make sense of phenomena, seeking explanations and thinking critically about claims and ideas.
- Develop pupil’s ability to work scientifically and take part in scientific experiments. Including the development of skills such as; predicting, asking questions, making inferences, concluding and evaluating based on evidence and understanding
- To provide opportunities for practising mathematical skills such as counting, ordering numbers measuring to an appropriate number of decimal places, drawing and interpreting graphs and bar charts, in real contexts.
Teaching science through forest schools.
At Whitefield, we are able to provide pupils with outdoor learning opportunities throughout our forest school programme, which helps to develop real-life understanding of scientific concepts. Pupils from Year R to Year 6, engage in a variety of activities that link directly to the science national curriculum objectives. These activities range from creating fair tests to measure the impact of exercise on heart rate, building outdoor rain gauges and watering systems for our wildlife area or even learning about the reactions and changes caused when building a fire. Our pupils love learning outdoors and getting hands-on. Our topics are chosen with consideration to fit alongside our integrated curriculum book and outdoor learning opportunities.
National Science Week 2021
Each year at Whitefield Primary Academy, we love to celebrate National Science Week. Usually, this would be a great opportunity for us to invite some outside speakers into our school to show us some amazing science, but sadly this year we were unable to do this.
In school, we did have a range of fantastic activities that pupils took part in and we also took part in the National Science Week competition ‘Innovating for the Future’.
Our winning poster this year was submitted by Coby in Year 3! Well done for your amazing artwork and ideas.
Here's a collection of useful websites that can be used at home, just click on the links.
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/category/discover/science/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z2pfb9q
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z6svr82