Our vision for science at Waterbeach

“Our school community will have confidence and opportunities to explore

the why's and what ifs of our world.”

At Waterbeach, children are encouraged at every age to explore, question and investigate the world around them. As children progress through school, they are provided with opportunities to broaden their understanding of the world through our engaging curriculum.

In EYFS, children can experience and observe hatching eggs in an incubator and watch caterpillars become butterflies in their classrooms. Children are encouraged to bring with them their experiences and to share, build on and grow their scientific thinking and understanding of the world around them.

Children in KS1 observe the four seasons throughout the year and experience the changes in the seasons through the outdoors. We build on our scientific language, identifying and comparing the properties of materials as well as classifying animals.

Throughout KS2, children continue to develop and explore familiar topics such as the states of matter and animals. Expanding on their prior knowledge, the children build confidence in their scientific understanding. This is balanced with the introduction of new topics such as light, sound, electricity, forces, earth and space, and evolution and inheritance.

If you would like to find out more, please see the link below to our science curriculum progression document which maps out the science journey children take through our school and how each year builds and expands on the learning in the previous year.

Science Capital Approach

The Science Capital Teaching Approach aims to encourage all children to see that science is for them. Using the children's experience and interests, our science curriculum is designed to encourage excitement around science in school.

Science Enquiry Types

Science Enquiry gives children the opportunity to use different investigation skills, strategies and techniques throughout their science learning. Throughout their learning at Waterbeach, the children use a variety of enquiry types in their science work. Children explore scientific questions through enquiry and have the opportunity to design and action experiments to answer those questions.

There are a number of different ways of describing enquiry types in science. We use the six enquiry types as defined by the Primary Science Teaching Trust.