SJB Science Booster

The Year 5 girls who attended had a wonderful time (and were a credit to our school).

They learnt about the heart, lungs and circulatory system - and dissected a lamb's heart!

Here are what the girls thought of the day:

"I want to be a vet so I found it really useful.  It's made me want to be a vet even more now," Esme;

"I want to be a doctor when I am older so I thought it was really good to practise doing something that felt like an operation," Isabella;

"I really enjoyed the Science Booster and want to do it again because you learn new things," Alissia;

"It was really interesting and useful and I want to go back again and try new things in Science," Naduli.

Pupil Voice

At Our Lady and St Philomena's we think it is important to listen to the children to help to develop our school. We carried out some interviews with pupils from Year 1 to Year 6 about Science in our school and they had some fantastic feedback for us.

The strongest message throughout the school was that children are really enjoying their Science lessons. They describe their Science lessons as interesting and thought provoking and particularly enjoy getting hands on and carrying out experiments and investigations!

Here is some of their feedback:

"Science explains everything around us and helps us to understand things more - it is the best subject because it involves mystery and discovery, we are the ones who are finding things out." Year 6

"I loved the experiments on Science day like elephant toothpaste and the disappearing candyfloss. We are always discovering new things we didn't know before and having fun doing experiments" Year 2

"Experiments are fun and help me to learn new things, when you do experiments it's exciting but it teaches you lots of new things." Year 4

"I love to discover new things rather than look at pictures when we go to a place or have a close look at the real thing then it is easier to describe." Year 3

Our school has signed up to be part of the BBC's exciting new Science project Terrific Scientific. Terrific Scientific is aimed at 9-11 year olds and our Year 5 and 6 classes will both be taking part. The goal is to inspire primary school pupils to discover their inner scientist. Currently, fewer than 15% of 10-14 year olds aspire to pursue a career as a scientist, leaving the UK with a potential skills shortage.

The BBC have partnered with leading universities to create a series of child-friendly nationwide scientific investigations. Our Year 5 and 6 children will carry out these investigations in class as well as taking part in some online live lessons from the BBC. The data we gather in our school will be sent to the BBC and to universities and will be put together with data from lots of other schools to feed into real academic studies.

We are looking forward to our first experiment taking place in January 2017 and to the rest of this exciting journey of scientific discovery!

If you would like to find out more about this exciting project have a look at the Terrific Scientific website by clicking on the link below. There is lots of information but also interactive activities for the children to use and explore.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/terrificscientific

Experiment 1 - Taste

BBC Terrific Scientific Experiment 2 - Time

We have taken part in a second experiment for Terrific Scientific all about time. We had to keep sleep diaries before and after the clocks changed this weekend and record our reaction times on Friday and Monday by catching a ruler. The aim is to find out whether the clocks changing has had an impact on our sleeping patterns or levels of alertness. We had lots of fun measuring reaction times and some of the children were very alert. We learnt why the clocks change and about time zones around the world which linked really well to our topic of Space in Science.

Working Scientifically at OLASP

Science Trips

Science Booster at St John Bosco

The Year 5 girls have been lucky enough to be invited to St John Bosco to take part in some Science Booster classes this year.

Session 1 - Biology - November 2016

The girls spent the afternoon in the lab working with the teacher and some sixth form students and were a real credit to our school with their excellent behaviour and enthusiasm. They learnt all about the heart and were given the opportunity to dissect a lambs heart which they really enjoyed. The girls came back full of enthusiasm for Science and with ambitions to become doctors! We are really looking forward to our next visit.

Session 2 - Physics - February 2017

This time the girls were looking at electricity. They really enjoyed working with circuits and completing different challenges and came back enthusiastic about Physics.