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Planning and assessing working scientifically skills

When planning the teaching of the working scientifically skills, it is important to note that the National Curriculum makes clear that the working scientifically skills,

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“must always be taught through and clearly related to the teaching of substantive science content in the programme of study.”

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Planning Working Scientifically

To support planning of the teaching of the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills, the Planning Working Scientifically documents (Years 2, 4 and 6 to follow later in the year) list the working scientifically activities for each year-group, that are included in the Working Scientifically Matrices, organised by the topics in that year-group. These activities are the ones that most frequently feature in schemes of work. The activities included are not an exhaustive list of working scientifically activities, so you can edit the Word documents to remove and add activities as required.

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Many of these working scientifically activities can be used to teach a number of the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills. Where, in the Working Scientifically Matrices, an activity is used to illustrate more than one PLAN Working Scientifically Skill, the document indicates this and you will need to choose which to focus on during the activity. The PLAN Working Scientifically Skills included for any working scientifically activity should not be taken as definitive. It is possible that the activity can be used to teach other skills, so you can edit the Word documents to remove and add skills as required.

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You will notice that not every topic in a year-group lends itself to teaching all the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills, so it is important to bear this in mind when planning out where particular skills will be taught through the year. You should not expect to complete all of the working scientifically activities featured in the documents with your children. You should use them to select enough opportunities, across the year, for your children to learn and practise the skill sufficiently to become secure in using it independently by the end of the phase. The Planning Working Scientifically documents can be downloaded below.​​

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Assessing Working Scientifically

To enable teachers to use the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills to assess children against the National Curriculum working scientifically statements, this document demonstrates, for each phase, how the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills cover the working scientifically statements from the National Curriculum, allowing teachers to link the formative assessment of individual skills to make summative judgements. â€‹Download the Assessing Working Scientifically document by clicking on the image below.

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