To mark Science Week 2016 Carr Hill hosted a range of activities to celebrate science, technology, engineering and maths!
The first activity for Year 7 students involved a ‘Speed dating’ concept. Pupils worked in pairs or small groups, interviewing people who have a career in science or engineering. Their were seven guests who all work in STEM jobs ranging from a 16 year old apprentice at BAE, Astronomy, Nuclear Fuels, Electricity Northwest, Wildlife conservation and many more. included the Director of the Wildaid Foundation, a Reader in Astronomy, a Biomedical Scientist and a member of the Assembly Line at BAE. The students had the job names and descriptions but had to come up with as many questions as possible in 4 minutes in order to try and match the ambassador to a job name and description. All the guests were North West based and volunteered their time to help students learn about the different career opportunities available in scientific and engineering fields.
The following day Year 8 students faced the Faraday Challenge, named after Bristish scientist Michael Faraday, The pupils were asked to design a communication code that could be used between two cities, one with electricity and one without. Students created an alphabet code to communicate words using a range of sound and colours to differentiate between individual letters and words.
Students worked in teams of six and were each given a role to play throughout the project ranging from Accountant to Project Manager to Cryptographer. Pupils worked together to come up with the best way to communicate using limited budget and resources. Once students had agreed on a communication code they were able to purchase equipment from ‘a shop’ using the funding allocated to the task.
Year 8 Jakob said of his group: “We focused on safety with our design to try and cover everything that could go wrong when communicating between the two cities. It’s been trail and error and we’ve had to figure out any problems that have come up along the way.”
Another group decided to use the principles of roman numerals to create their code. Year 8 Max said: “ Coming up with the idea and the code has taught us a lot about cryptography and electric curcuits. We all had different ideas to start with but now we are working well together.”
Once the students had created their codes they were marked in five areas. Points were gained for the quality of the prototype, teamwork skills and budget management. Pupils also gained points for delivering a presentation explaining their prototype.The winning team was Team Six and the members were; Molly, Danielle, Katie, Naomi, Oliver and Charlie.
The students have also taken part in many other quizzes and activities this week focussed on their future aspirations and possible STEM careers.
Science teacher Miss Webster said: "It raises so much awareness of STEM careers and allows the students to see where their current STEM knowledge and skills being taught in lessons is used in careers."
Science Week 2016
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