Science is a discipline that gives us a fulfilling understanding of the macroscopic world around us, by exploring its microscopic components, the relationships between things and the transfer of energy between them. It also reveals its own scientific methods as a way of observing the world around us to reliably generate evidence and test ideas, which brings confidence and clarity to an uncertain world.

Our overarching ‘Key concepts’ in science encapsulate these ideas of what science is, allowing students to see the common threads and interconnectedness in what they are studying across the scientific disciplines, and across ages / phases. They are: 

SA. The macroscopic world around us is driven by its (sub)microscopic components that we can rarely see.

• As exemplified by the study of organisms and their cells, and materials and their particles.

SB. All things interact through complex relationships like cause and effect.

• As exemplified by the study of how humans are impacting global ecosystems, how substances interact to form new substances, and how motion is affected by forces and the fields between objects.

SC. Energy is the currency of the Universe; it passes between things and makes change possible.

• As exemplified by the study of ecosystems, biological and chemical reactions, and energy stores, transfers and resources.  

SD. The scientific method reliably generates quantitative and qualitative evidence which we can use to develop and test theories and models.

• As exemplified by the study of apparatus and techniques, equations and data analysis, and the limitations of models and theories 

Students are explicitly taught to recall the four key concepts of Science, and guided to reflect on them throughout their learning.

Beyond this, we identify the ‘Big ideas’ that recur within the substantive knowledge of discipline, drawn from “Principles and Big Ideas in Science” by Harlen et al., and Jasper Green’s “Powerful ideas of science and How to Teach Them”. They represent the most revolutionary but also most fundamental ideas of the subject, and some of the best that has been thought and said within science. To complement these, we have explicit ‘Big ideas’ about science, to give a similar consistency to our development of disciplinary knowledge.  

By making these explicit, we can plan to deliberately and regularly revisit them throughout our spiral curriculum. They help teachers understand the learning journey of students, specifically what prior and future knowledge may be relevant to current learning. Students are made explicitly aware of revisiting these Big Ideas, but are not expected to recall them given that they are highly expert concepts that would only hold profound meaning to students at the end of their scientific studies.