We use the Plan Assessment Knowledge Matrices to structure and sequence our curriculum. These provide clear progression in both substantive knowledge (key scientific concepts) and disciplinary knowledge (scientific enquiry skills), ensuring pupils know more, remember more and can apply their learning effectively over time.

Our curriculum is designed to:

• Be carefully sequenced to build knowledge cumulatively, enabling pupils to make meaningful connections across topics
• Ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum for each year group by the end of Key Stage 2
• Develop pupils’ ability to think and work scientifically, including questioning, predicting, observing and evaluating
• Promote curiosity, resilience and independence, encouraging pupils to explore and investigate the world around them
• Be inclusive and accessible, ensuring all pupils can achieve and succeed in Science

The use of the Plan Assessment Knowledge Matrices ensures clarity in progression and supports teachers in delivering a curriculum that is both rigorous and responsive to the needs of our mixed-age classes.

Key features include:

• Clear progression through knowledge matrices:
  The Plan Assessment materials precisely identify the knowledge and skills pupils need to acquire in each unit. This ensures that learning is:

  • Sequential and builds on prior knowledge
  • Focused on key concepts rather than isolated activities
  • Structured to deepen understanding over time

• Curriculum design for mixed-age classes:
  In our mixed-age setting, careful curriculum mapping ensures that:

  • All National Curriculum requirements for each year group are fully covered by the end of Key Stage 2
  • The Year 4 curriculum has been carefully woven through other year groups and given additional curriculum time, ensuring coverage without the need for a separate rolling programme
  • Pupils revisit key concepts at increasing depth rather than repeating learning
  • Teachers adapt expectations so that pupils work at an age-appropriate level of challenge within shared topics

  This approach ensures that progression is maintained and that no statutory content is missed.

• Working scientifically embedded throughout:
  Enquiry skills are integrated across all units, enabling pupils to:

  • Ask and refine scientific questions
  • Plan and carry out investigations
  • Record, analyse and interpret results
  • Draw evidence-based conclusions

• Adaptive teaching:
  Teachers ensure all pupils can access the curriculum through:

  • Scaffolded support where needed
  • Targeted questioning
  • Flexible outcomes matched to pupils’ stage of development

• Vocabulary-driven curriculum:
  Key scientific vocabulary is explicitly taught and regularly revisited to support precision in pupils’ explanations.

• Practical and enquiry-based learning:
  Pupils engage in hands-on investigations that deepen understanding and promote engagement.

• Assessment for learning:
  Teachers use the Plan Assessment Knowledge Matrices to inform ongoing assessment, ensuring that gaps are identified and addressed and that pupils make sustained progress.

Impact

As a result of our Science curriculum, pupils at Little Leigh Primary School:

• Develop secure, well-structured scientific knowledge across all strands of the National Curriculum
• Make clear progress in both substantive knowledge and working scientifically skills, including within mixed-age classes
• Demonstrate the ability to think scientifically, ask questions and apply their learning in new contexts
• Use subject-specific vocabulary accurately and confidently
• Show curiosity, engagement and enthusiasm for Science

Evidence of impact is seen through:

• Pupils’ work, which demonstrates progression in knowledge, application and scientific thinking over time
• Classroom discussions showing increasing confidence and depth of understanding
• Accurate use of scientific vocabulary
• Assessment outcomes informed by the Plan Assessment Knowledge Matrices

For further information, contact  Jo Proctor jproctor@littleleighprimary.cheshire.sch.uk