Science department
The Science department ran two primary school sessions in July:
Student leadership (acids and alkalis) session:
- Mrs Evans and Mr Muscart acting as facilitators only.
- Acids and alkalis session planned and delivered by our young Science leaders Adam Wright (Yr 7), Leon Woods (Yr 8), Maham Akhyar (yr 8) and Liam Clarke (Yr8).
- Session was delivered to Year 5 pupils from Lunts Heath Primary school.
- Our Science leaders all took responsibility for meeting after school with Mrs Evans and Mr Muscart to prepare and practice the delivery of their section and to practice their investigations.
- Our Science leaders taught Year 5 about how to stay safe in a laboratory, how to handle chemicals correctly, how to use indicator to test a range of acidic, alkaline and neutral household solutions, how to help a witch work out the correct ingredients to use in her potion, and how to create a neutralisation circle.
- On the day our leaders also had responsibility for a small group of students to support them in their investigation work, promote working together as a team to obtain data, and support peer assessment.
- Our Science leaders were excellent in their role, constantly questioning year five about why they have received their results and how their understanding of acids and alkalis could relate to the real world.
Year five evaluations were exceptionally positive and below are some of the pupil comments:
‘It is a real big privilege coming here’
‘I enjoyed everything, it was beast’
‘If this is what they do in normal lessons I’m defo coming here’
‘my leader was very kind and helpful and when you are stuck on something he gave us clues but not the answer’
When asked if the session could me improved students replied
‘No, it cant be beaten’
‘Could be longer’
Mrs Evans and Mr Muscart reported how exceptionally behaved all students were, how infectious their enthusiasm was, and spotted some future Scientists to watch out for.
Harry Potter session
- Led by Mr Challinor (Harry Potter) and Mrs Wilde (Hermione Granger).
- Year 6 students from Fairfield were involved in a range of exciting activities around the theme of fire including methane bubbles, traffic light flames, firewriting, turning coins into silver and gold, getting raisins to dance and water to bend, and then finishing off with air bombs.
- Potter and Granger reported how enthusiastic and polite the pupils were and how enjoyable they made the day. Students asked lots of wonderful and interesting questions.
- Students went home with their authentic Harry Potter ‘potions, lotions and spells’ certificate, sorting hat prizes, fire writing result, and their gold/silver penny.
Pupil evaluations again were very positive. When asked that they would like to do if invited next year they replied ‘This again’. Other comments included ‘I cant wait to show this to my mum at home’.
