Working Scientifically Matrices
The working scientifically statements for each phase in the science National Curriculum for England (Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2) are what we assess children against. However, in order to provide schools with learning intentions that can be used during lessons and shared with children so that they develop a common language for talking about how they work as scientists, PLAN has broken down the working scientifically statements into 8 PLAN Working Scientifically Skills which are shown below. Some of them only feature in the National Curriculum in Key Stage 2 and these have been indicated.
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Asking questions
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Planning an enquiry (Key Stage 2 only)
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Making predictions (Key Stage 2 only)
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Gathering data
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Recording data
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Presenting data (Key Stage 2 only)
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Drawing conclusions
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Evaluating an enquiry (Key Stage 2 only)
The table below shows how these PLAN Working Scientifically Skills align with the working scientifically skills most commonly used by schools with their pupils in order to demonstrate that the new resources support the teaching of the working scientifically skills whatever skills schools choose to use.
Working Scientifically Matrices
There is a Working Scientifically Matrix for each two-year phase: Key Stage 1; Lower Key Stage 2; and Upper Key Stage 2.
In each matrix, under the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills that children will need to learn in that phase, the elements of the ‘Key learning’ for each of the skills are listed with their associated ‘Expected outcomes’. Each element of the ‘Key learning’ for each skill is numbered. This does not denote any kind of hierarchy. It is simply a reference number used to identify the different elements of the ‘Key learning’ for a skill in the Planning Working Scientifically documents for the two year-groups in the phase.
To help teachers model and assess the ‘Expected outcomes’ for each element of the ‘Key learning’ for each of the PLAN Working Scientifically Skills included in each phase's matrix, there are examples of work for each year-group. Teachers can access the examples of work for each skill individually in each year-group or all the examples of work for all the skills for their year-group can be downloaded as a document.
The matrices for each of the three phases can be downloaded from the 'Resources' section of this website or from the carousel below.
