Science

Intent

Early Years Foundation Stage

In the Early Years Foundation Stage, science begins within Understanding the World, and specifically The Natural World: children explore why things happen and how things work in the world around them, led by their own curiosity. At Canada Hill this is built on the pedagogical principles of Early Excellence — high-quality continuous provision, well-planned enhanced provision and purposeful direct teaching, working together rather than as separate strands.

Our Reception curriculum is designed backwards from what children need to know and be able to do to make a successful start in Year 1. A dedicated Science/Investigation area and a Nature Area, alongside Gardening and Growing, are available to children every day, indoors and outdoors, throughout the year. Our intent is that children leave Reception having asked their own questions, observed real change with their own eyes, and cared for living things with their own hands, so often that curiosity about the natural world is a settled habit rather than a taught fact — the direct foundation for Woodland School, our Key Stage 1 science provision, which continues the same outdoor, first-hand, enquiry-led approach into Year 1 and Year 2.

Key Stage 1

In Key Stage 1, science is taught weekly and outdoors through Woodland School, our own two-year rolling programme built around real fieldwork, live animals and the school garden; this is set out in a separate overview. Woodland School has been audited in full against the Developing Experts Year 1 and Year 2 curricula and found to cover every statutory unit, with greater depth in several strands. Developing Experts is used only as an optional resource for pre-teaching or consolidation, not as the framework driving Key Stage 1 provision.

Key Stage 2

At Canada Hill, our Science curriculum develops children as curious investigators, knowledgeable thinkers and confident explainers of the world around them. In Key Stage 2, it is built on the Developing Experts programme merged with our own existing science curriculum, and mapped against the PLAN Working Scientifically progression, ensuring that pupils secure a deep understanding of scientific concepts and the confidence to apply them.

Through a carefully sequenced progression from Year 1 to Year 6, children encounter and revisit the big ideas of biology, chemistry and physics — such as living systems, materials, forces, energy and Earth processes — at increasing levels of depth. In Key Stage 2, high-quality subject knowledge videos, explicit teaching of misconceptions, and a consistent focus on scientific vocabulary ensure that pupils gain strong conceptual foundations. In Key Stage 1, the same big ideas are built the other way round — through direct, repeated, hands-on contact with real plants, animals, materials and weather, revisited weekly across a full year rather than taught once in a block.

Working Scientifically is woven through every unit, with each Developing Experts unit mapped to a specific PLAN Working Scientifically skill in Key Stage 2, and each week's Woodland School session mapped the same way in Key Stage 1. Pupils continually develop skills in observing, measuring, classifying, pattern-spotting, testing and researching, with practical experiences that build year on year, deepened through reasoning and discussion where children justify ideas, challenge misconceptions and think critically about evidence.

Our intent is that all children leave Year 6 as confident, curious and capable young scientists — secure in key scientific ideas, skilled in enquiry, able to reason clearly and prepared for the demands of Key Stage 3 and life beyond.

Implementation

Early Years Foundation Stage

Science in EYFS is not a discrete taught subject. It is built into Understanding the World and threaded through continuous provision, enhanced provision and direct teaching, in line with our Early Excellence approach.

Continuous Provision — a dedicated Science/Investigation area and a separate Nature Area are available every day, alongside Gardening and Growing, Sand and Water. Each is designed with a specific scientific purpose: Science/Investigation for developing investigative and scientific language, commenting and asking questions about the familiar world, and talking about why things happen and how things work; the Nature Area for a love of nature, experiencing the effects of weather, the seasons and the growing cycle, and acquiring vocabulary relating to plants and the environment; Gardening and Growing for hands-on experience of the growing cycle, with real early-writing opportunities such as seed labels. Water and Dough/Malleable provision add regular, repeated opportunities to explore the properties of materials and to observe and discuss change.
Enhanced Provision — each half term has a clear curriculum focus with a linked Investigation Station and feely box, changed to match it: magnifying glasses, mirrors, sorting trays and natural collections for the autumn's senses-and-seasons focus; torches, colour paddles and transparent and opaque materials when the focus moves to light and shadow.
Direct Teaching — each half term's ten core vocabulary words, displayed at child eye level and revisited throughout the term, include scientific vocabulary matched to that term's focus: senses, skeleton and change in the autumn; life cycle, hibernation and freeze/melt as the year moves on. Consistent key questions — 'what do you notice?', 'what is the same?', 'what is different?', 'why do you think that?', 'how can we test it?' — give children a repeatable structure for scientific thinking well before they can name it as such.
Oracy — children are taught to say 'I agree because…' and 'I disagree because…', justifying their reasoning with increasing independence: the same sentence structure that Woodland School then builds on directly with its own predict-and-justify routines in Key Stage 1.

Where Year 1 children are taught within the Reception classroom, National Curriculum science objectives are woven into the same continuous provision and direct teaching, with Year 1 pupils accessing greater depth, challenge and recording. Curriculum mapping already in place covers, for example, testing materials and simple comparative tests linked to light in the autumn, and the structure and classification of plants and animals — including carnivores, herbivores and omnivores — linked to the Growth and Change focus in the spring.

These same Year 1 children then go on to Woodland School each week, so their science provision moves without a break from continuous-provision-based coverage in the mixed classroom into the weekly outdoor programme in Key Stage 1.

Key Stage 1

Key Stage 1 science is taught through Woodland School, a weekly, entirely outdoor programme for mixed Year 1/2 classes, run as a two-year A/B rolling cycle. Each session is built around direct contact with something real — the school's own chickens, a working pond, a wattle-and-daub building, a full year of self-collected weather data. The same six elements used in Key Stage 2 are present, delivered differently:

Key Knowledge comes from first-hand observation, supplemented by short video clips where useful
Misconception Checking happens through a differentiated retrieval slip completed at the start of every following session.
Scientific Enquiry follows the same PLAN framework, planned week by week rather than unit by unit.
Practical Work is nearly always the whole session — real fieldwork, real animals, real growing and building
Vocabulary is taught explicitly every week with an action or a real object, and revisited on the retrieval slip.
Careers Links come from the school's own site and community — the RSPB Big Schools' Birdwatch, caring for the chickens and school dog, the local wattle-and-daub building

Woodland School has been audited against the Developing Experts Year 1 and Year 2 curricula and found to cover every statutory unit for both year groups in full, with greater depth in several strands — habitats and fieldwork, plants (pollination and germination investigation), seasonal change, and the properties and uses of everyday materials. Developing Experts materials remain available to staff for optional pre-teaching but are not required to meet coverage.

Key Stage 2

In Key Stage 2, our curriculum blends the structured, knowledge-rich teaching of Developing Experts with our own existing science curriculum, with scientific enquiry mapped against the systematic skill progression of PLAN Working Scientifically. Each mixed-age phase (Year 3/4, Year 5/6) follows a two-year rolling programme (A/B cycle), ensuring full National Curriculum coverage with no repetition or gaps. Every unit includes:

Key Knowledge Explanations — high-quality DE videos and explainer content introduce concepts clearly and model precise scientific language.
Misconception Checking — common misunderstandings are explicitly identified and addressed through retrieval and discussion.
Scientific Enquiry — enquiry types are deliberately planned using the PLAN framework so children practise a balanced range of skills across each year.
Practical Work and Modelling — children experience hands-on investigations where they observe, classify, test ideas and collect data in age-appropriate ways.
Vocabulary Development — tier 2/3 scientific vocabulary is taught explicitly, revisited throughout the unit and connected across topics.
Careers Links — DE's STEM videos broaden aspiration and connect learning to the real world.

Progression is carefully designed so children revisit big ideas with increasing sophistication. For example, ‘materials’ moves from simple grouping (Y1) to states of matter (Y4) and reversible/irreversible changes (Y5). Working Scientifically skills progress from simple observations to systematic enquiry, data interpretation and reasoned conclusions.

Assessment includes retrieval routines, quick quizzes, practical outcomes and end-of-unit DE assessments in Key Stage 2, and a weekly differentiated retrieval slip, dated plant diaries and a full year of self-collected weather data in Key Stage 1. Together, they give a rich picture of conceptual understanding and enquiry competency across both key stages.

Impact

By the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage

Know More

Talk about what they notice in the natural world, using vocabulary introduced and revisited across the year — senses, change, life cycle, hibernation, freeze, melt.
Know that living things grow and change over time, and describe simple life cycles having watched them directly.
Describe what living things need to survive, and explain simple ways to care for them and their environment.

Can Do More

Explore using their senses, and observe and describe natural objects, materials and change.
Ask their own questions about the natural world and begin to test simple ideas.
Compare plants, animals and environments, and notice similarities, differences and patterns.

Think Like Scientists

Use 'I agree because…' and 'I disagree because…' to justify their thinking with increasing independence.
Answer 'what do you notice?', 'what changed?' and 'why do you think that?' as a settled habit, not a novelty.
Approach new experiences with curiosity and persistence — what staff describe as being 'a Tryatops' when faced with something new.

Are Ready for Key Stage 1

Meet the Early Learning Goal for The Natural World through genuine, repeated, first-hand experience in a dedicated Science/Investigation and Nature Area used every day. Children arrive in Year 1 already confident in an outdoor learning environment, with the habits of observing, questioning and justifying already established — ready to move seamlessly into Woodland School's weekly, hands-on approach to science.

By the end of Key Stage 1

Know More (Substantive Knowledge)

Understand the big ideas of KS1 science — plants, animals including humans, everyday materials, seasonal change, and living things and their habitats — through direct, repeated, real-world experience rather than a single taught unit.
Use everyday and some tier 2/3 scientific vocabulary accurately, built week by week and revisited through a retrieval slip in every session.
Retain core ideas through weekly retrieval and a full year of self-collected data — a rain gauge, a shadow chalked at the same spot every week, and dated plant diaries.

Can Do More (Disciplinary Knowledge)

Observe closely, sort and classify, and set up and carry out simple comparative and fair tests.
Take simple measurements and gather and record data using tallies, pictograms and diaries.
Use observations and evidence, rather than guesswork, to suggest answers.

Think Like Scientists

Make a prediction and say why, then compare it honestly with what actually happened.
Handle living things and real materials with care, curiosity and increasing independence.
Ask their own questions about the natural world around them, prompted by direct, weekly contact with it.

Ready for Key Stage 2

Pupils leave Key Stage 1 having been audited in full against the Developing Experts Year 1 and Year 2 curricula, with every statutory unit covered and, in several strands, exceeded in depth. They arrive in Year 3 with two years of hands-on, outdoor scientific experience and the habits of a working scientist already established.

By the end of Key Stage 2

Know More (Substantive Knowledge)

Understand key scientific ideas across biology, chemistry and physics.
Use precise vocabulary to describe processes and explain phenomena.
Retain core concepts through spaced retrieval and revisiting of big ideas.

Can Do More (Disciplinary Knowledge)

Plan and carry out different types of scientific enquiries.
Make predictions, take accurate measurements and record data systematically.
Identify patterns, draw conclusions and use evidence to support their ideas.
Work safely and confidently with scientific equipment.

Think Like Scientists

Justify, compare and critique ideas using reasoning and evidence.
Challenge misconceptions using evidence.
Communicate clearly using scientific reasoning.

Are Ready for KS3

Pupils leave Year 6 equipped with the conceptual understanding, enquiry skills and scientific language needed for secondary science. They recognise how science connects to real-world problems, future learning and aspirational STEM careers.

Science Overview