Science
‘It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree – make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” Elon Musk
We believe it is essential for our students to develop a deep understanding of the natural world and the scientific processes that govern it. Our intent for pupils is to foster a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world, encouraging them to ask questions, explore, and discover. Through our science curriculum, we aim to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and lifelong learners. By providing students with engaging and practical scientific learning experiences including the use of our wonderful outdoor space and visitors into school. We collaborate with the wider community to provide opportunities for students to explore real-world scientific applications and engage with local experts in the field. We aim to instil a love for science and a curiosity about the world around them. This supports our overall goal of nurturing well-rounded individuals who are equipped with the knowledge and skills to succeed in an ever-changing world.
Primrose Lane’s aims for science:
We want all children to be provided with rich learning experiences that aim to:
- Prepare our children for life in an increasingly scientific and technological world today and in the future.
- Help our children acquire a growing understanding of the nature, processes and methods of scientific ideas.
- Help develop and extend our children’s scientific concept of their world.
- Build on our children’s natural curiosity and develop a scientific approach to their learning
- Encouraging open-mindedness, self-assessment, perseverance and developing the skills of investigations – including observing, measuring, predicting, hypothesising, experimenting, communicating, interpreting, explaining and evaluating.
- Develop the use of scientific language, recording and techniques.
Science at Primrose Lane
In Year 1 in the autumn term children have been carrying out some fantastic science and investigations. The children have been learning all about the season of autumn and its changes relating to trees and leaves; they have carried out bug hunts and have learnt all about key vocabulary such as exoskeleton and invertebrate; this as lead to investigating bugs in non-fiction books and the class has also learnt about light- exploring light sources and non-light sources.
In Year 3 in the autumn term children explored something called the Mohs scale, which was a scale thought up by Fredrich Mohs to determine which rock was harder than another. It is a relatively simple test involving one rock scratching another. If the rock is able to scratch or crumble the other then it is the harder rock. This allows the scientist (our amazing year 3 children) to easily test the hardness of rocks and put them in order and assign a number to them relating to their hardness.
The children absolutely loved being hands on with the different rocks and creating their own tables and scales. They were incredibly sensible with how they handled the rocks and took turns very well so that everyone had an opportunity. Some brilliant scientific skills were in action including observation, asking and answering questions as well as making predictions before they tested any rocks. Well done Year 3!
