Thaxted Primary School is committed to not only providing every child with a rounded Science curriculum but also to ensuring that every child leaves the school with an enjoyment of the subject. We are aiming to develop the scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding of the children in biology, chemistry and physics. We do this by explicitly teaching the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science today and for the future, as well as stressing the importance of scientific enquiry to answer fundamental questions about the world around them.

We believe that our children are the future in so many ways - not least in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). Countries around the world are seeing jobs in STEM growing at a greater rate than other fields. We want our young people to be equipped to take those roles. To this end, Science at Thaxted Primary School reflects our whole school vision of fostering an enquiring mind-set in every child, while giving children the tools that enable them to work increasingly independently. The 6Rs at our school are embedded in our science teaching and learning: respect, reasoning, resilience, responsibility, reflection and resourcefulness. Clearly, the most applicable of these are reasoning, resilience and reflection - which are all a part of working scientifically.

Working scientifically is embedded into our Science curriculum. For too long, Science lessons in primary schools have been about merely learning facts and theories. At Thaxted, we aim to show the children the importance of scientific enquiry - we teach the facts and theories and then encourage the children to prove them. In Key Stage 1 and lower Key Stage 2, that usually involves teachers setting up an experiment or investigation for the children; by upper Key Stage 2, more freedom is given to pupils to design, conduct and evaluate their own experiments or investigations.

Across every year group, our children are encouraged to be responsible for their own work, yet have the resilience to ask for help when required - again reflecting the importance of the 6Rs in our community.

At Thaxted Primary School, we are proud to be a lead school working with the Ogden Trust, a charity that delivers Science subject training to teachers as well as free Science resources and equipment to schools. Over the past two years, our resources have improved dramatically enabling teachers to deliver exciting and engaging lessons using equipment relevant to topics covered across every year group - including electricity, space, forces and materials.