Science

Our Vision

The purpose of Science teaching in Key Stage 3 is to develop a deeper understanding of a range of scientific ideas in the subject disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Pupils should begin to see the connections between these subject areas and become aware of some of the big ideas underpinning scientific knowledge and understanding.

The Science curriculum at Bowland details the core knowledge is the minimum factual knowledge that we expect all key stage 3 pupils to acquire. We share this core knowledge with pupils through our knowledge organisers for each topic that they study.

The thinking behind this curriculum is: It is impossible to improve the skills of critical thinking, problem-solving, analysing and evaluating without content-specific facts and background knowledge. Therefore, we must consolidate pupils’ knowledge foundation securely before we require higher-order thinking.

The ‘core knowledge’ principle relies on pupils being able to connect their knowledge – we do not expect pupils to know many isolated facts. Therefore, it is essential that this curriculum stresses the importance of integrating new knowledge with old and relating different scientific concepts.

‘Working scientifically’ is described separately at the beginning of the programme of study, but must always be taught through and clearly related to substantive Science content in the programme of study. We aim for pupils to have as many practical opportunities as possible during Key Stage 3 but always ensure that students have the underpinning knowledge to make sense of what they are seeing.

We teach topics in rotations of 3: one Biology, one Chemisty and one Physics topic. This means that different classes will be following their own pathway through the curriculum above and may study each set of 3 topics in a different order to their peers in another class.