ExelAcademy International Curriculum
Foundation and Formation Phases
Ages 3 to 9
Our Vision
The most powerful ideas in science are not beyond young children -- they simply need to be met through play, wonder, and hands-on exploration. When a child watches ice melt, rolls a ball down a ramp, or plants a seed, they are already asking the same questions that drive all scientific inquiry: What happens? Why? What if I change something?
Our curriculum introduces concepts like forces, materials, ecosystems, and cause-and-effect from the earliest ages -- not through textbooks, but through meaningful, sensory-rich experiences that build deep, lasting understanding. By the time children reach structured investigation at ages 7-9, they are not encountering these ideas for the first time. They are returning to them with greater precision, sharper reasoning, and the confidence to explain the world using evidence.
Wonder drives inquiry.
Exploration builds understanding.
Science becomes a way of seeing the world.
Overview
Science & Inquiry at ExelAcademy blends scientific knowledge with inquiry skills. It is designed to develop observation, reasoning, and evidence-based thinking from the very earliest years of education.
The curriculum moves from sensory exploration at ages 3-5, where children discover the world through play and wonder, to structured investigation at ages 7-9, where learners plan fair tests, collect reliable data, and justify their explanations with evidence.
At every stage, questioning comes before explanation. Children are encouraged to notice, wonder, predict, and test -- building scientific habits of mind that transfer across all areas of learning and life.
Developing attention to detail, pattern recognition, and precision through purposeful sensory exploration.
Turning natural curiosity into investigable questions that drive purposeful exploration and deeper understanding.
Moving from trial and error to fair testing, building skills in prediction, planning, and repeatable investigation.
Developing the ability to reason, justify, and communicate scientific thinking using observation and data.
From the first moment a child asks "why?" to the day they design their own experiment, the Science & Inquiry curriculum supports every step of the journey.
Curriculum Spine
Each theme spirals across all four phases, growing in depth, precision, independence, and abstraction. Concepts are revisited with increasing sophistication rather than restarted each year.
I Can Statements
First-person statements that progress from "I can notice..." in Phase A to "I can design and explain..." in Phase D. Each statement reflects increasing cognitive demand across observation, prediction, testing, evidence, explanation, and reflection.
Scheme of Learning
Learning spirals and deepens rather than resets yearly. Children revisit the same nine themes across both phases, each time with greater depth, precision, and independence. Below is a termly overview of how the curriculum unfolds across the academic year.
Assessment
Assessment in Science & Inquiry prioritises depth over speed. It measures how children think, reason, and apply their understanding -- not just what they recall.
Children move through these stages of scientific thinking. Progress is not linear -- learners may revisit earlier stages when encountering new contexts, which is a natural and important part of deepening understanding.
Depth over speed. Understanding over coverage.
Applied Learning
Science Quests are 4-8 week immersive inquiry projects that begin with a real-world scientific question. They create the need for investigation, require testing, modelling, and refining, and culminate in a presentation or explanation. Each Quest integrates scientific knowledge, experimental skills, data interpretation, and reasoned explanation.
Ages 3-5
Ages 6-9
Inquiry is recursive -- learners may cycle back through stages as their understanding deepens.
Growth in Action
Students reflect regularly on three dimensions of growth:
What scientific questions are we pursuing? What challenge am I taking on?
What values, safety, and integrity must be protected during investigation?
What knowledge, habits, and scientific thinking are developing over time?
