Science

At Castle Academy, we believe that science will allow pupils to make informed decisions and choices throughout their lives.

By fostering and maintaining a curiosity throughout their education, our pupils will be able to: 

• Understand how the world around them works  
• Adapt to a life in a modern world  
• Experience and share the cultural capital that Science provides 
• Show resilience when solving problems 
• Decipher fact from fiction by learning how to look for reliable sources of information 

Assessment 

Pupils’ learning of the curriculum is assessed on an ongoing basis to monitor progress and identify the next steps in learning. In lessons, teachers check pupils can understand and remember the key knowledge and working scientifically skills which are built into the curriculum.  Multiple choice quizzes are built into each unit to assess recall and understanding, these act as a diagnostic tool to inform teaching and provide pupils with feedback on their learning.  

At Castle, our pupils’ scientific journey starts with understanding the world and involves guiding them to make sense of their physical world and their community.  

The 8 Big Ideas of the Science Curriculum 

At Castle, we focus on 8 specific areas, called ideas.   

These are: Organisms, Ecosystems, Genes, Waves, Forces, Electricity and Magnets, Matter and Earth 

Our curriculum maps detail the sequencing of substantive knowledge from the disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics to enable pupils to build schemata of important concepts over time through eight ‘big ideas’. 

Working Scientifically   

Our curriculum details the scientific enquiry skills involved in the processes of Science, including an understanding that questions are fundamental alongside the design of experiments; reasoning and arguing with scientific evidence and analysing and interpreting data.  These strands of enquiry are broken down as:   

• Asking Questions,  
• Making Predictions,  
• Setting up Tests,  
• Observing and Measuring,  
• Recording Data,  
• Interpreting and Communicating Results and Evaluating