At Cherry Burton Primary School, our Science curriculum is designed to inspire curiosity, deepen understanding, and nurture a lifelong interest in the world around us. Aligned with the National Curriculum for Science, our approach ensures that pupils develop secure knowledge across the three key scientific strands — Biology, Chemistry and Physics — while also becoming confident, critical thinkers who can work scientifically.

We believe that Science should be hands-on, purposeful, and engaging. Through carefully planned practical investigations, children explore scientific ideas in meaningful contexts, developing key skills in questioning, predicting, observing, measuring, recording, and evaluating.

Each year, pupils experience a balance of the five types of scientific enquiry:

• Observing over time

• Comparative and fair testing

• Identifying and classifying

• Pattern seeking

• Research using secondary sources

Our progression of learning builds systematically from the Early Years to Year 6, allowing pupils to revisit and deepen their understanding of key concepts such as living things and their habitats, materials and their properties, forces, light, and electricity. This ensures that scientific knowledge is remembered, applied, and extended over time.

To enhance science capital and connect learning to the real world, each unit of work is linked to a significant scientist, engineer, or innovator—from botanist Jane Goodall and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, to astronaut Tim Peake and chemist Marie Curie. By exploring the contributions of diverse scientists, pupils see how scientific discovery continues to shape our world and how they, too, can aspire to make a difference.

At Cherry Burton, Science is more than a subject—it is a way of thinking, exploring, and understanding. Our aim is that all pupils leave us with a secure foundation of scientific knowledge, an appreciation of the power of evidence and enquiry, and a sense of wonder about the natural and physical world.