Spring Term Meeting

We had our first Spring meeting in January to make some exciting plans for the new year. We then completed a water flow challenge making predictions and carrying out a fair test. 

Science event

Our science ambassadors loved hosting the first science event of the year. They  led four different investigations linked to the Crest Award including fantastic fingerprints and racing rockets. 

Planning our Science Ambassador meet up

Mrs Makin met with other science leaders from different schools in our local area. We are hosting some training for other science ambassadors. The teachers agreed our focus would be to achieve the CREST awards, so we have been busy researching and planning 4 activities we can complete with ambassadors from other schools. We decided on

• Bridge Blunder
• Fantastic Fingerprints 
• Suprising Strains
• Racing Rockets

Micro:bits

This week we collaborated with the Digital Leaders and looked at some of the different functions of the micro:bits. We wrote algorithms for the micro:bits to collect data and made our own step counters.

Science Resources

In our meeting this week, we looked at the themes planned for across the school year. We found some wonderful resources which we have given to teachers including- electric batons for Year 6, mini bug magnifiers for Reception, space booklets for Year 4 and a rocks magazine for Year 4. 

Meet your Science Ambassadors for 23/24

Heywood Great Science Share

We had a fantastic afternoon of science. Our Science Ambassadors led the investigation 'What liquid cleans the coins the best?' The children showed great confidence in explaining the enquiry to the other school's groups, supporting them making a prediction and completing the investigation. They then clearly articulated the reason behind the results.

Our science ambassadors got to explore and learn about bubble mixtures, helicopter spinners, bicarbonate of soda reactions and surface tension, led by science ambassadors from our local schools.

The science buzz was infectious! 

KS1 Phyzzi Olympics

Our Science Ambassadors supported the Heywood Partnership KS1 Science Olympics, they worked alongside teachers from our partnership schools to help children to complete 5 challenges and develop their working scientifically skills.

Plants with Reception

As Science Ambassadors, we went down to Reception to help them learn about plants. Through their topic of Jack and the Beanstalk, the children were learning about planting, how to take care of plants and completing observational drawings of bulbs and tubers. We supported them applying their new vocabulary and exploring the bulbs and tubers. 

Science Ambassador Event.

Our Science Ambassador challenge event was attended by 48 children from across our Ogden Trust partnership schools. They completed 2 CREST challenges collaboratively with children working in mixed groups from each school. 
Their first challenge was ‘Which toothpaste is the best?’ Exploring different ways we can change and test variables. 
Next we used our engineering skills to build a bridge- some of them were very sturdy with lots of thought into their design and structure. 
A fantastic afternoon of collaborative, child-led science. 

CREST Challenge- How do you have your tea?

Over the past 2 weeks we have completed the challenge ‘How do you have your tea?’

We generate questions which we could ask to answer this question before creating a Google form questionnaire. 
This questionnaire was completed by 69 people. 
We discussed data sets and how to analyse before deciding on our hypothesis focus:

’Younger adults (under 40) are more likely to have sugar in their tea.’ 

We analysed our data and found there was no difference between the percentage of over 40s and under 40s having 0 sugars (both 60% of our sample). But under 40s were twice as likely to have 2 sugars over 1 sugar. 
 

After this, we talked about the impact of our findings and what we could do to investigate this further or on a larger scale. 

CREST Challenge- Water density.

This week for our CREST challenge we tested what happened to water density when we added varying amounts of salt to water. We created rainbows using the densities to predict the colour order.

CREST Challenge- find the criminal. 
This week as part of our CREST challenge we looked at fingerprints. We learnt how to take fingerprints and created our own profile. 
Then we worked in small groups to identify who’s fingerprint was on the container, not only who but which finger they used to touch it! 

CREST Challenge- The Colorado Brown Stain

This year, our Science Ambassadors are completing work towards their SuperStar CREST award, this involves 8 challenges. 
Their first challenge was ‘The Colorado Brown Stain’. Following reports of brown stains on teeth in an area of Colorado, scientists were researching the benefits vs risks of adding fluoride to tap water. 
Our ambassadors had to research using secondary sources to create a balanced argument with a concluding statement ‘for or against’. 

Applications for our new science ambassadors.

Each year our existing Year 6 Science Ambassadors have the very difficult job of selecting our new Year 5 Science Ambassadors. The ambassadors create their own judgement criteria, looking at passion for science, commitment to the role, what they feel they can bring to the role and presentation of application. 
 

Phyzzi-Olympics.

The science ambassadors really enjoyed competing in the Phyzzi-Olympics held at Newhouse Academy. They completed several physics-based challenges requiring scientific skills and collaborative working. They came 2nd place overall. Well done- you were all amazing!

Heywood Great Science Share

We had a great afternoon at the Heywood Great Science Share. We shared our bubble investigation and got to take part in the other schools' investigations, we learnt about red cabbage indicator, air resistance helicopter, density and bicarbonate reactions. We also got to see some investigations which Dr McKie uses as part of his research as a neuroscientist.