Policy:
Subject Ambassador: Miss A. Hunter-Purvis
Link Academy Councillor: Mrs. A. Johnson
Statement of Intent 2021 – 2022:
Our Vision:
A place where our children, adults and community can grow and thrive rooted in
Kindness, Fellowship and Confidence.
At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary School, we recognise Science as being an integral part of everyday life. We want our children to be curious about the world and have the skills and confidence to find out more. We provide the children with engaging and well thought out lessons, that stimulate and challenge the children’s thinking. A clear, planned curriculum is taught in topics across the year groups. Children are taught in their specific year groups rather than their learning zones to ensure coverage across the curriculum. This encompasses the three key areas of science: Biology, Chemistry and Physics, building on the children’s previously taught knowledge and scientific vocabulary. Children are taught to be inquisitive and eager, using ICT and a range of sources to help them find answers and build on their understanding through questions, scientific observations and research. We pride ourselves on providing the children with opportunities to ask in-depth and exciting enquiry questions based on the curriculum topics. Built into the heart of our curriculum is our annual STEM week where visitors and specialists are invited into school to inspire the next generation of scientist.
Stanhope is in an area of outstanding natural beauty and we are fortunate to be able to use our local resources to enhance the children’s learning and experiences throughout their time at Stanhope.
Delivering Science in a new way
From September 2021 we have decided to deliver the science curriculum in year groups rather than Learning Zones. Each teacher is delivering science lessons to one specific year group which may be different from the year groups in their allocated Learning Zones.
We have done this for a few reasons:
- To ensure correct coverage of the National Curriculum objectives
- To ensure progression is clear across the whole school
- To ensure children have the correct building blocks in place for every topic
- To deepen the children’s knowledge and take every opportunity to embed ‘sticky knowledge’
- To allow children to work with peers of the same age who may not be in their Learning Zone
- To utilise the expertise of teaching staff to deliver science in different year groups
- Our long-term plan now allows us to focus on a wider variety of enquiry questions and investigations
Year 1 – with Mr. Storey
The Three Little Pigs! – This half term we are concentrating on everyday materials as we attempt to understand what things are made of and why. Using the traditional tale of the Three Little Pigs as a hook the children have discovered a rejuvenated Mr. Wolf, who no longer blows down houses. In fact, he now sets fire to them! This has allowed us to test the materials the three little pigs used to build their houses. We used a fire to see how quick each material would burn and how safe it would be. Next week we will analyse our findings and come up with a conclusion.
Year 2 – with Mrs. Cross
Learning About Recycling – Having spent this half term learning about Everyday Materials, we spent our last lesson learning about which of them could be recycled. Children were given a range of different ‘bins’ to use and had to sort lots of different household items into the current recycling bin and identify items which couldn’t be recycled and had to go to landfill sites.
We watched a video about how plastic, paper and glass are recycled inside the recycling plants and how they go on to be used to make other objects.
Exploring Everyday Materials in our Churches – Our unit for Spring Term one in Year 2 is Everyday Materials. The children have been learning about the properties of wood, glass, stone, metal and many others. On Tuesday 12th January 2022, we took our learning outside and visited both St. Thomas’ Anglican Church and Stanhope Methodist Chapel to explore and identify what items we could find made from different materials.
Dr Haynes showed us many local treasures at St. Thomas’ Church including our unique Font which is made from Frosterley marble and the famous Fossil Tree. The children were amazed to learn that the stained glass window at the rear of the church is 800 years old.
We also compared granite (used for a gravestone) and sandstone (used to build the porch). The children impressed Rev Claire and Dr Haynes with their knowledge of properties and their use of scientific vocabulary such as ‘transparent’ and ‘opaque’.
We then visited the Methodist Chapel with Mrs Sawyer and the children were able to identify similarities with St. Thomas’ Church and also the differences. They saw the metal collection plate and organ and explored the use of wood for pews, panelling and the pulpit.
Thank you to our local churches for supporting this lesson which has allowed us to exploit the unique learning opportunities in our local environment.
Rev Claire: “I am suitably impressed with the children’s knowledge.”
Dexter: “ I can’t believe there used to be volcanoes in Stanhope!”
Animals including Humans – During our topic of Animals including humans, the children have found out about animals and their young, finding out about the different way’s animals are carried and born into the world. They have looked at the stages of development a human goes through and identified the characteristics of the different stages. We have learnt about leading a heathy lifestyle and the importance of keeping clean, we even developed our own hand wash!
Year 3 – with Miss Hunter Purvis
Forces and Magnets – Our topic this half term is Forces and Magnets. We got to test the strength of different types of magnets to see which one was the strongest. This ring magnet attracted over 100 paperclips!
Pattern seeking enquiry – The Year 3s have been learning all about Animals including Humans in their science lessons in the first half term. We learnt all about different types of skeletons, the bones in human skeletons, nutrition and muscles. To finish off our topic, we conducted a pattern seeking enquiry with the question ‘Do people with longer arms throw further?’ Our findings told us that people with long arms don’t necessarily throw further and we produced some excellent graphs to show this.
Year 4 – with Miss Hepple
Circuits – In science, Year 4 have had lots of fun completing practical investigations on circuits. We have identified renewable and non-renewable sources, how we can keep safe from electrical equipment and how a complete circuit works using a range of different equipment such as batteries, lightbulbs and switches.
Sound – Year 4 have been learning about sound this half term. The children have really enjoyed learning how sound travels over distance. Firstly, we used our prior knowledge to explain how sound travels from the air into our brains. Then, we investigated how sound would travel by creating our own string telephones. It was great fun!
Year 5 – with Mr. Clarke
Human Life Cycle – This term Year 5 mainly focused on the human life cycle, learning about how humans are born, grow and develop throughout their life time and the different changes which take place at different times. The children learned that human babies are more reliant on their parents than other animals and this was demonstrated in an egg-speriment where they became parents to their very own baby! There was nothing self-raising about this child as they had to work together to look after it throughout the day. The children found out how hard it was to be a parent as not all of the offspring survived the day.
Year 6 – with Mrs. Green
How we see light – Our Mad Science topic for Year 6 has been light in Spring term. We used equipment to demonstrate how we see things using light waves. This topic has also helped us to understand reflection, refraction and the visible colour spectrum discovered by Isaac Newton.
How do Nutrients travel around our body? – The Year 6 children had a fantastic lesson this week where they were looking at how nutrients go from our food into our bloodstream. We had a messy time recreating the digestive systems which demonstrated how the small intestine uses the villi to absorb nutrients and water which is then transported around our bodies in the circulatory system. Great work year 6!
Archived Information
You can view our archived Science information on our website.
