At Cherrywood Community Primary School our vision is to ignite pupils' curiosity and encourage them to confidently explore and raise their own questions that they can then answer by using a variety of scientific enquiries.
Children will leave Cherrywood with a range of science skills, which will ensure they can continue to build on their solid understanding of scientific concepts throughout their lives. We promote a passion for science, which will allow children to be inspired by the subject in the wider world and develop a questioning approach, thus operating successfully as young scientists. By doing this, we nurture the children’s natural curiosity and their on-going knowledge and understanding of the world around and beyond them. Through mostly hands-on, enquiry-based activities, children will experience the joy of learning ‘how’ and ‘why’, encouraging them to investigate questions they do not know the answer to and by trying to find ways to answer them independently or with support. We expect children to become progressively better at tackling a range of scientific problems that can arise from a range of contexts or difficulty.
Our curriculum has recently been updated to support the teaching based on problem-solving activities in such a way that the skills and knowledge build up on one another to support and ensure progression. At Cherrywood, we strongly believe that children should learn science through doing science. For this, children are taught a sequence of conceptual ideas that will support them to ultimately problem solve. By doing this we ensure children understand the focus on how to ask, investigate and answer questions, while providing rich opportunities for collaborative working and enabling children to show resilience, because science is as much about finding out what does not work as what does! With the new approach, lessons are structured to ensure recall of previous learning is included and children are able to relate to previous units of work to understand a new concept. During lessons, pupils are encouraged to be confident in the use of a range of scientific vocabulary, to ask questions and not to be afraid of getting it wrong, but instead viewing it as an opportunity to learn.
The overall aim is to ensure that all children within Cherrywood the provision is science is done in a way that is meaningful, relevant and contextualised. At Cherrywood, links with local secondary schools are made as often as possible to enrich learning and to prepare children for what it is to come. Furthermore, a variety of science focused school trips including visiting zoos, aquariums, farms, local museums and Science Centre are made available to all children throughout their time at Cherrywood to further develop their first-hand experiences in science.
Our fantastic school grounds are utilised as much as possible to support learning during each unit: planting and harvesting food; and investigating our grounds’ many habitats. We encourage our children to be responsible and recognise how lucky we are to have our school grounds to be used as a resource.
By providing these opportunities, we ensure that our children are motivated, confident life-long learners who will continue to explore our world and beyond, long after their time at Cherrywood Primary School has come to an end.
Golden Threads
“Science is the torch which illuminates the world.” Louis Pasteur
At Cherrywood Community Primary School our vision is to ignite pupils' curiosity and encourage all children – including those with SEND – to confidently explore and raise questions which they can then answer by using a variety of scientific enquiries (Disciplinary Knowledge). They do this by developing a range of scientific skills that will ensure they can continue to build throughout their lives. We promote a passion for science, which will allow children to be inspired by the subject in the wider world and develop their critical thinking, thus operating successfully as young scientists. During lessons, pupils will be confident to ask questions and not be afraid of getting it wrong, but instead viewing it as an opportunity to learn. By doing this, we nurture the children’s natural curiosity and their on-going disciplinary knowledge, these being our Golden Threads.