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At Hampton High School the Science curriculum aims to provide students with the industrial skills (researching, presenting and analysing data) needed to work not only in science but also in numerous other fields. By the time students leave Hampton High they will be able to critically scrutinise information they encounter to enable them to make informed decisions throughout their lives.

At the start of their scientific study at Hampton High students become equipped with a foundational skill set in laboratory techniques and data handling to ensure that all students are on a level playing field when they join us, as many have never been in a science laboratory before secondary school.

Schemes of work are designed to ignite students’ curiosity about the world around them with practical investigations, research projects and debates.

Science Curriculum Intent and implementation

Intent

At Hampton High, all students will gain the skills and knowledge necessary to interact with science throughout their adult lives. Every student no matter their starting point or ability will have the aspiration to access the curriculum through the learning cycle, to build and embed concepts and ideas. Our broad and balanced curriculum will spark students’ curiosity for the world of science around them. Retrieval practice is embedded into the curriculum to ensure long term retention of knowledge and build scientific confidence. Students will be encouraged by the expert science teachers to communicate like scientists using subject specific vocabulary and practice the practical skills needed to take their scientific learning forward.

Implementation

Develop the 10 big ideas in science from KS3 to KS4 through a spiralled curriculum model.
Tailored lesson for the needs of all students in every lesson.
Learning journeys that outline the key learning objectives to allow students to track their progress in the subject
Cumulative summative assessments twice a year to help students embed concepts in their long-term schema.
Retrieval based classroom activities and homework to enrich and consolidate the learning taught in lessons.
Assessment data is used to track student progress, informing subsequent teaching and identifying students in need to intervention.

How do we help our students to ROAR?

Resilient: In the Science department we challenge students to analyse and evaluate scientific data to draw their own, informed conclusions. Students are challenged to see links between pieces of evidence and interpret trends for themselves.

Open-Minded: Woven throughout the curriculum are opportunities to explore global science issues and students are encouraged to consider multiple points of view when forming their own opinions. Students also have the opportunity to debate some of these issues where they learn to actively listen and value the opinions of others.

Aspirational: Through our curriculum, we aim to give our students the opportunity to explore the vast number of careers that qualifications in science can prepare them for.

Reflective: Students are encouraged to reflect on their work and progress throughout the key stages. This may be achieved through evaluating their experiments or contemplating and improving on their current conception of how the world works.

Year 7 Intent:

In Year 7, we equip students with the necessary skills to work safely and effectively in a laboratory and to analyse the data that they will collect in their investigations. We also reinforce the industry skills needed in science during their end of term projects.

We select topics for Year 7 that link not only to their KS2 knowledge but are the basic building blocks for each of the science disciplines, biology, chemistry and physics.

Year 8 Intent:

In Year 8, students continue to hone their scientific skills of analysing and evaluating through new topics from each of the scientific disciplines. As in Year 7, practical work forms the core of students’ learning whilst at the same time we lay the foundational knowledge that will help them grasp more complex ideas at GCSE.

Year 9 Intent:

In Year 9, students study all three of the sciences concurrently and will have a separate specialist science teacher for each of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We will then build on the knowledge and skills developed in Year 7 and 8. This is the start of the students GCSE journey. They will be introduced to the Science specification and taught how they will be assessed in the final GCSE exams. Although students are being exposed to the GCSE content this will take into account the age and ability of students in Year 9.

Year 10 Intent:

In year 10, students study all three of the sciences concurrently and will have a separate specialist science teacher for each of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We will then build on the knowledge and skills developed at Key Stage 3. Though scientific theory plays a bigger role at GCSE than at Key Stage 3, the practical element of each science remains a key focus. Not only must students complete a range of required practicals which they could be examined on at the end of the course, we also include a range of other practical investigations throughout each of the three science curricula.

Year 11 Intent:

In Year 11, from the spring term we recap the course content with a strong focus on exam technique to prepare students for their GCSEs. Lessons focus on recall of key information and the key skills of applying information to new situations, describing and explaining trends in unfamiliar data, and evaluating evidence relating to content they have studied.