Curriculum Intent

At Frederick Gent School we believe that Science is important in order to enable our students to understand the world and how it impacts them. All students starting in Year 7 follow the AQA 5-year spiral curriculum which is knowledge-rich and has been devised and sequenced based on concepts that are systematically revisited, adding complexity over time. This allows a smooth transition throughout each year group from Key Stage 3 to Key Stage 4 while providing all students with quality, stimulating and challenging content, delivered to instil an expectation of success and a compulsion to learn.

Progression through the curriculum will encourage students to enjoy Science and promote a natural curiosity and inspire a desire to explore careers in STEM and further understand the world around them. Students will be encouraged to be brave, ambitious and develop their team working skills by regularly undertaking practical work, to apply their knowledge, and use analytical skills, apply their knowledge and understanding of science to explain what is occurring, predict how elements will behave based on their properties, analyse causes, identify trends and patterns in data, as well as encourage creativity and problem solving

Our hope is to develop well rounded citizens in addition to contributing towards their personal, moral and cultural learning and development.

Key Stage 3

The students follow the AQA KS3 Science syllabus. This scheme of work helps students meet AQA’s mastery goals with a bespoke two-year course filled with Big Idea Principles and Enquiry Processes. Each topic students visit engages and excites them with materials and activities that brings Science to life. It encourages students to think and work scientifically with embedded enquiry processes throughout each topic which act as a foundation of learning for GCSE.

Year 7 starts with the fundamentals of the key concepts that run throughout the curriculum, extending their knowledge of concepts from Key Stage 2. Here are some examples of topics they will learn: acids and alkalis and their uses in our everyday lives, properties of metals and non-metals, human reproduction and development.

In Year 8, students continue to build on knowledge and skills learnt in Year 7 allowing them to expand their understanding of key concepts. Here are some examples of topics they will learn: Properties of the Periodic Table, how our body organ systems work, Energy stores and how energy is transferred when changes happen.

For both Year 7 and Year 8, knowledge is assessed regularly through end of topic tests (2 topics combined in one test), along with an end of year assessment set by TTCT.  This along with teacher and additional internal assessments is used to set the students for the transition to the next stage of their science journey

*Please note: the long-term plans are an exemplar of one class- each class will not visit the topics in the same order but will still be taught the same content*

Year 7 Science Long Term Plan

Year 8 Science Long Term Plan

Year 9 Science Long Term Plan

Key Stage 4

Students follow the AQA GCSE Combined (Trilogy) suite of Science Specification leading to a Double Award in Science, the equivalent of two GCSE grades examined at the end of Year 11. Students will study all three Sciences; Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Studying the Sciences provides a variety of transferable skills that can be applied to a vast range of different career paths. Throughout the curriculum there will be regular use of retrieval practice to supports students in retaining and retrieving knowledge in prep to successfully complete and achieve ambitious grades in internal and external assessments.

Year 10 Combined Science Long Term Plan

Year 10 Seperate Science Long Term Plan

Year 11 Combined Science Long Term Plan

Year 11 Seperate Science Long Term Plan