Intent
Science helps shape our understanding of the world around us from the microscopic to the macroscopic and allows human thought and creativity to be realised. The Science faculty at Cansfield aims to engage our students by conveying our own love of science. We deliver well-planned enjoyable lessons that encourage our students to develop their own curiosities of the world around them. We strive to produce learners that ask questions and communicate information accurately, make observations and draw conclusions based on them. To explain their thinking and to justify their decisions and search independently for information when answers allude them.
Our students study units of work from the three Science disciplines: Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Students naturally compartmentalise what they learn according to the specific context in which that learning occurred therefore we aim to improve our student’s ability to forge connections within and between the Science disciplines by emphasising links between concepts during our teaching.
Biology is the study of living organisms and the natural world around us. Our understanding of the building blocks of life have helped pave the way for new medical discoveries, improvements in the quality of life, and a greater understanding of how the world works. Advancements in Biology has allowed progress in the use of stem cells to produce replacement organs and aided the production of robotic limbs, fully controlled by the brain. Biology will only grow in importance over the next few decades and biomedical engineering and similar areas of study are becoming some of the fastest growing fields today.
Chemistry is the branch of science concerned with the substances of which matter is composed, the investigation of their properties and reactions, and the use of such reactions to form new substances. Chemistry plays a role in everyone’s lives and touches almost every aspect of our existence in some way. Advances in chemistry enabled Howard Florey and his team of chemists to develop a technique to purify penicillin in useable quantities and Chemistry will be at the heart of solving many of the world’s environmental problems e.g. unrecycled plastics.
Physics is the study of matter, energy and the interaction between them. It has played a key role in the progress of mankind and will continue to do so. It has allowed the development of medical instrumentation such as magnetic resonance imaging and laser surgery, answers questions like ‘why is the sky blue?’ and enables us to continue to develop our understanding and exploration of our universe.
Implementation
We have designed our key stage 3 curriculum to ensure the sequence of knowledge has been carefully considered so that it is pedagogically coherent. The knowledge is layered in a way that ensures foundation knowledge is covered before moving on to content that either relies upon its coverage or develops its complexity. For example, students begin their learning journey in Biology in Year 7 by studying ‘Cells’ as the basic unit of life and then build on this in Year 8 when studying how energy is released from these cells during respiration. In the Year 8 Chemistry topic on ‘Matter’ students learn about the particles in solids, liquids and gases before learning how these particles become involved in chemical reactions. Particle theory is further developed in a topic in Physics looking at how these particles facilitate the transfer of energy within a substance. As students move on to study at Key Stage 4, foundation knowledge is re-visited and topics increase in depth and complexity. For example, basic knowledge of cells develops into how these cells divide and differentiate to take on specific roles within organisms.
Practical opportunities are used to improve understanding of theory and also enables students to develop skills of scientific enquiry. These skills are developed throughout the curriculum and prepare the students to undertake the GCSE required practical tasks in Years 10 and 11.
As a faculty we have shown an increasing interest in the bridge between evidence-based research and classroom practice and have taken this into account when designing our curriculum. We have considered research evidence as to how students develop knowledge mastery and this has led to a strong emphasis in our curriculum on Retrieval. Tasks based on core knowledge are delivered at the start of every lesson and time has been explicitly allocated for retrieval lessons to ensure time is taken to re-visit challenging concepts.
We fully appreciate the need to improve student’s literacy skills to help them to access materials more effectively, and to make them more confident learners. Therefore, schemes of learning in science identify high priority keywords which are shared with pupils every lesson and opportunities to incorporate specific literacy skills are identified. For example, pupils in Year 7 answer an extended-answer question to describe states of matter and Year 8 pupils produce a piece of creative writing or storyboard on the journey of a food through the digestive system.
Ensuring that learning is relevant is a key aspect of ensuring knowledge is retained and Science teachers at Cansfield take every opportunity to highlight the application of a concept in a ‘real world’ context. Careers linking to an area of work are discussed and are written explicitly into our schemes of learning in order to promote careers in science and to help raise aspirations. Guest speakers from a variety of science disciplines are invited into lessons to link learning to specific careers in the Science sector and to help raise aspirations.
Student achievement can be limited when students don’t realise that skills they learnt in another subjects can be helpful. Cross-curricular links are highlighted wherever possible in our teaching. For example, work on Drugs and alcohol in Citizenship, Religion and Careers (CRC) lessons supports work on these topic areas in science and this is further developed when the effects of these substances on the nervous system is studied.
Impact
The importance of developing a secure knowledge base is vital in order that learning can evolve and new knowledge be acquired. In order to determine whether students are developing a mastery of the Science curriculum, regular opportunities for retrieval practice are in place as lesson entry activities and as tasks embedded throughout lessons which assess essential knowledge and its application.
Disciplinary Mastery assessments are low-stakes tests that are conducted approximately every three weeks to assess retention of key concepts. The information from these enables staff to regularly monitor student performance and to intervene as appropriate to prevent underachievement. Specific ‘Retrieval’ lessons are built into the curriculum to enable content to be re-visited and misconceptions to be addressed. In addition, pupils have two formal assessment points throughout the year in which the pupil’s ability to recall and apply knowledge is determined. At Key stage 3, the rigor and structure of assessments is considered carefully and consists of Recall, How Science Works and Application questions. At Key Stage 4 assessments are produced using past GCSE questions, with the format of Foundation and Higher tier exam papers being emulated. Year 11 mock exam papers make use of full GCSE papers. This enables the use of published grade boundaries in order that a realistic measure of performance can be ascertained, leading to greater accuracy of teacher predictions of GCSE performance.
‘We must train our young people to shape a better world and not just get by in the current one’
Peter Hyman
