The Meadow Park School’s science department aspires to ignite and cultivate a love of science in its pupils.

Intent
The science faculty at Meadow Park School believes that science is the ultimate explanation for the world in which we live, and we wish to transfer our enthusiasm and passion for our subject to our students.
By the end of a students’ journey through learning science we intend to develop their:

  • Depth of knowledge to allow students to master concepts.
  • Ability to investigate science.
  • Ability to communicate
  • Apply numeracy and literacy skills to science.
  • Develop high aspirations in science.
  • Be able to have the resilience to handle difficult ideas.
  • To apply their ability and knowledge to unfamiliar contexts.
  • To apply their understanding of how to progress.

Implementation
We aim the deliver the highest quality lessons within the science department. Lessons allow students to develop what we believe is powerful knowledge enabling our skilful teachers to address pre-existing misconceptions to fully embed ideas, so they stick. We use ongoing assessment with interleaving recall and review strategies to respond to students’ gaps in the knowledge and to ensure that students re-visit powerful knowledge before their end of unit assessments. Through ongoing work to develop students’ memory, we aim to build students confidence in our subject and develop the resilience needed to handle more challenging concepts and ideas.

We also use the AQA KS3, KS4 and KS5 specifications not only to identify powerful knowledge but provide continuity for our students. We ensure that our required practical activities develop students’ investigative skills, and these skills are mapped so students can make gradual progress in their investigative ability as they transition from KS3 to KS4 and KS5.

Our assessment encourages students to communicate what they have learnt and how they need to progress, and our homework allows our students to further plug their knowledge gaps and develop a deeper understanding of science.

We wish all of our students to have high aspirations, which is why we provide context to students within our lessons, but also look for opportunities for visitors and events to come to our school add to student’s cultural capital.

Impact
We aim to foster a love for learning science and aim to have more of our students stay on with us to study science at KS5, and for those students who are with us to continue exploring science further at university and in their future Careers.

Though not all students will want to study science further, we aim to build a strong foundation and appreciation for the role that science has in our world and to able all students to be strong, capable learners of conceptual knowledge and to transfer their skills to learn for life.

We constantly monitor, evaluate, and adapt our curriculum through our quality assurance mechanisms to ensure that all our students get the highest quality of science teaching from us, and all our students stay committed to a journey of being the best they can be.