Understanding the world at Beckfoot Hazelbeck – Beckfoot Hazelbeck Special School

Animals

Covers the categories of animals, animal habitat, and animal well-being and care. It builds from students recognising and naming animals and recognising the types of habitats certain animals may be found in, through an understanding of food chains. It includes the recognition of features and categorisation of different animals, developing knowledge of why certain animals live where they do, and knowledge of how to look after animals in different situations.

This scheme teaches students the importance of taking care of animals and how to react to animals in a calm and gentle way. This can help students when out in the community and helps them understand how to respond to animals when they come across them.

Exploring the environment

This scheme is appropriate for all learners and covers weather, seasons, the environment around me, and, at the later developmental stages, the history of a place. This scheme teaches students to recognise and respond to different weather conditions and explore, identify, and explain seasonal changes. Through this scheme, students learn to respond to the environment and identify changes in it, building their knowledge to learn about specific geographical features, changes in environments/ buildings, and how these take place over time. This scheme gives students the knowledge to recognize and name things in their environment and develop their understanding of how the world around them changes over time.

Humans and being healthy

This scheme is suitable for all learners and includes My body, Being Healthy, Illness and Medicine. From the Concrete stage onwards, knowledge of First Aid is introduced and from the Early Abstract stage, knowledge about Drugs and Alcohol is included. The scheme covers knowledge of body parts, healthy diet and exercise, understanding different illnesses and how to prevent these being spread and what action to take when a person is hurt. This scheme progresses from early body awareness through to specific Scientific knowledge of health and how to look after themselves. Through this, it provides students with the knowledge they need to help keep themselves healthy, safe, and well.

Keeping safe

This scheme covers Keeping Safe in the Community, Dangers in the Environment, Water Safety, Fire Safety and, from the Concrete stage onwards, Electrical Safety. This knowledge is essential for students in all aspects of their life- whether at school, at home, visiting friends or out in the community. It provides students with the confidence to know what to do in potentially unsafe situations and what actions to take to avoid these situations arising in the first place to keep themselves and others safe through risk assessment and safe behaviours. Through developing this understanding, students will be able to broaden their experiences and settings that they are able to visit, whilst at the same time staying safe.

Materials

This Scheme covers responding to different materials and, from the Concrete stage of Development onwards, includes Categorising and Sorting, Labelling, and Properties of Materials. It teaches students to identify similarities and differences between items and the materials they are made from and develops students’ abilities to categorise things in their environment to make better sense of the world. It supports students to develop awareness of which materials can be recycled or changed through processes such as heating as well as recognizing, at the Abstract stage, that some materials can change state. By better understanding materials and how they react in different situations, students are better equipped to choose the correct material for a certain purpose.

Plants

This scheme covers labelling, planting, and harvesting. From the Concrete stage onwards, it also covers the growth and life cycle of plants. Starting by exploring different elements linked to plants, e.g., leaves, bark, through to labelling specific parts of plants, how they work, and what needs to be done to help them grow. This scheme also teaches students to understand which plants are and are not safe to eat, and a better understanding of how many plants provide us with food.

Sustainability in the environment

This Scheme is suitable for students working from the Concrete stage onwards and covers Materials, Litter and Recycling, Behaviours and Pollution. The focus of this scheme is to give students knowledge and awareness so that they can better understand the impact of humans on the world and concerns about the world on a micro and macro level. This scheme helps students to understand how different things in the environment are affected by human behaviour and what can be done on different levels to help look after the world and make it a better place to live. With this knowledge, students become more aware and conscientious citizens and can see how they can do their part in looking after the environment.