STEM Blog

We are really looking forward to British Science week and each class has planned some exciting activities to really engage and enthuse the children. All classes will have a session using the microscopes that are on loan from the Royal Microscopial Society. Each class will also take part in the STEM Wind Turbine Challenge that has been devised by our science cluster school Hilderthorpe Primary. Some classes will be having a science visitor and Key Stage One will be taking part in a Farm Live! lesson online about tractors and space! All classes will have a hall slot to test and race their balloon powered vehicles so the more children and families that take up the challenge the better! Don’t forget we will be running our pop-up science shop after-school each day from Monday 13th March to Friday 17th March as stocks permit. Items will be priced from 50p to £2.00 and all profits raised will go to school funds to provide for future science related activities. Please see below for how else you can get involved in British Science Week. We would love as many families as possible to join in, good luck! Please do come and ask me (Mrs Platten) if you have any questions.

Take a science selfie

This can be just of you or with lots of different family members as long as everyone is happy to have their photo published in our school newsletter. Anything ‘sciency’ goes so use your imagination. Get outside and take nature photos, go on a scavenger or mini-beast hunt, create a nature collage, search for fossils or interesting rocks and stones at the beach, read a science related book (we have lots on the school virtual library), investigate different materials, study the weather or seasons, make a set of string telephones, make a musical instrument, do some shadow drawing, investigate freezing and melting, the list goes on. Here’s a great site for some extra inspiration.

https://www.science-sparks.com/science-experiments-for-kids/

When you have taken your selfie, ask an adult to email it to brands@eastriding.gov.uk by Monday 20th March and we will compile all of the entries into a science week newsletter special and we will pick an overall winner for a small prize and everyone who enters will get a certificate.

Create a balloon powered vehicle

Our year 5/6 pupils that attended after-school STEM Club in the Autumn term were the pioneers for constructing balloon powered cars and our STEM Ambassador pupils decided that it would be a great home-school challenge for British Science Week. If you want to participate you will be given a balloon, straw and elastic band and then it will be up to you to create your vehicle – preferably from recycled materials. You could use cereal packets or small boxes for the body of the vehicle and milk bottle tops for the wheels. You will also need to consider axles for your wheels. Then you can decorate your vehicle however you would like. Each class will have a time allocated during science week (your class teacher will let you know when this is but get your vehicle ready for Monday 13 March) for a class race-off. the winner form each class will take part in a grand final whole-school race off on Friday 17th March. There will be a certificate for all participants. Don’t worry, we will have spare balloons, straws and elastic bands just in case! Get thinking about your ideas now so that you are ready to take part. Here are some photos from STEM Club with their balloon powered vehicles and also a few other ideas but be as creative as you can!

Ok well perhaps not the floor, but the classroom was certainly full of lava lamps that were created by STEM Club tonight. The pupils loved measuring the correct amounts of water and oil and choosing the food colouring to add to their lamp but they were in awe when the Alka Seltzer tablets were added to release the gas and really make their lamps bubble. We stood each bottle in turn over a mobile phone torch which really illuminated the contents of the bottle so they pupils could see the gas bubbles rising. There was lots of opportunity for discussion on why the oil floated on top of the water, where the bubbles came from and what the science was behind the magic. The pupils were thrilled to take home their lava lamps with an extra fizzy tablet so they could show everyone at home what they had been learning.

Last Thursday, Key Stage One went on their first ever school trip and they were so excited about it! We were visiting Magna science museum to link to our current programme of work in science which is materials. More than that though, we wanted to give the children a hands-on interactive experience and a taste of learning outside of the classroom. Covid put a temporary halt to many of our trips and these pupils in particular have not the opportunity to experience a school trip. Everything from the coach journey, to eating a packed lunch together, to walking around and exploring was met with such enthusiasm. There were a number of other schools there on the day but I can safely say that our pupils were true ambassadors for Brandesburton Primary School and behaviour was exemplary. So many questions were asked, so many excited faces were seen that it may it a pleasure for all the adults that accompanied us on our trip.

The slime making workshop was an instant hit. The children listened really carefully to the member of Magna staff who talked to them about how to make their slime and he even performed a magic trick for them before he explained the science behind it! The children were careful with their measuring and enjoyed adding brightly coloured paint to their mixture too.

We also visited the fire, earth and water pavillions (air was closed) and the children got to witness a fire tornado which was really impressive and the heat from it could really be felt. In the earth pavillion, the children had the opportunity to role-play exploding a rock quarry, move boulders around in wheel barrows, simulate a rock crusher and drive a digger as well as listen to a Bob the Builder story. There was a buzz of activity as they push buttons and levers and tried out all of the interactive exhibits. In the water pavillion, the children could fire water cannons, float boats, make water move by lifting levers, feel an ice wall and measure their weight in litres of water. They also learnt that water is a precious resource and how many litres of water it takes to make a mobile phone and a pair of jeans.

After a very busy day, we made our way back to Brandesburton. We have to say a big thank-you to the PTFA who subsidised the trip by £10 per pupil as the cost of hiring a coach is extremely expensive and runs to many hundreds of pounds. We all think the day was well worth it and hope it won’t be too long before we can undertake further adventures outside of the classroom.

Tonight the pupils learnt about chain reactions and the concept behind Rube Goldberg machines. The idea came from cartoonist Rube Goldberg who drew and designed complicated, comical ways of achieving everyday tasks. We watched some examples on Youtube which fascinated the children then they were let loose in the hall with a range of pipes, tubes and bottles and some dominoes. Their task was to transport a table tennis ball along a series of obstacles with the aim of knocking something over at the end of it. In small teams they set to it and they worked really enthusiastically and co-operatively ensuring all members of their team were engaged. They really did come up with some innovative designs and I am glad that I left the judging to the STEM ambassadors! Lara, Georgina and Freddie were on hand to support each team and give positive feedback to both teams before picking their winning team by a 2-1 majority.

Look out for a message on this week’s newsletter from the STEM ambassadors as they need your help!

This week we investigated balloon powered rockets using balloons. This was after we had looked at the rocket fuel scientist Mary Sherman Morgan, who once worked in a factory of 900 engineers where she was the only women. A true pioneer for women in STEM! The pupils found this quite unbelievable just how unusual it would have been for a woman in the 1930’s to have been working in such a career.

So, it was into the hall for this week’s activity as we needed lots of space. Supplied with string, balloons and masking tape, the groups set to work on seeing how far they could get their balloon rocket to ‘fly’ across the hall. Some then tried taping two or even three balloons together to se if this improved performance (it didn’t seem to as it was quite a clumsy arrangement). The groups found that the rockets appeared to travel faster over shorter distances as the balloon reached the end of the strong before the air power had run out.

Some quotes from the pupils about this acitivty;

‘I really enjoyed it because we were making rockets with balloons and we even tried three balloons. It was amazing’ Iris

‘ I loved it, I loved pumping up the balloons.’ Jack

‘STEM Club is really good. We enjoy making rockets, making slime and loads of other things. I’m really excited.’ Georgina

This week the pupils had the chance to investigate different concentrations of foam bath mixed with water to see what would produce the optimum amount of bubbles whilst providing good value for money. Four of our STEM ambassadors attended the session and were very supportive of the year 3 and year 4 pupils as they had previously completed this investigation themselves. Lots of fun was had and once again the pupils were fully engaged in their task and worked co-operatively to whisk, shake, stir and blow their bubble mixture to produce an abundance of bubbles!

Freddie, on of our STEM ambassadors was also able to help me prepare our letter and water test strips to be posted off to relatives in different parts of the country to see whether how hard or soft their water is. This links back to an investigation done by the year 5/6 STEM Club prior to Christmas when we tested water samples from different sources within our school and confirmed that the water in our locality is hard and is responsible for the build up of limescale in kitchen appliances.

As briefly mentioned in the previous post we have created the role of pupil STEM Ambassador and this role has been given to five of our year 5/6 pupils. These pupils attended our y5/6 STEM Club and were so keen and so enthusiastic that they didn’t want to stop! One of the activities they will be undertaking includes supporting the roll-out of STEM Club to the lower year groups. As the club runs after-school, the Ambassadors are giving up their own free time to help with this which is greatly appreciated. They will also be helping to write this blog, post on the school Twitter account and write for the school newsletter to raise the profile of STEM initiatives within our school. They will work on developing some home school challenges for British Science Week and support the redevelopment of our Wildlife Garden to increase our outdoor learning provision. They really are going to be very busy and will certainly have a valued role within school.

The new term has started and with it the next rotation of the after-school STEM Club. This term it is the turn of the year three and year four pupils to attend, ably accompanied by our newly created STEM Ambassadors (but more about them in a future post!).

Tonight we started with a really engaging and fun activity: to make slime. The pupils were able to investigate different proportions of shaving foam and gel food colouring and glitter to add to their other slime ingredients to see what effect it had. They had to be quite patient with their stirring to get through the sticky phase until the slime started to form into a ball. They were all so enthusiastic and really enjoyed their first session.

Lots of things have been happening behind the scenes in recent weeks which are all starting to come to fruition. This will have a massive impact on opportunities for outdoor learning at our school. We are already fortunate to have quite large, rural grounds with a dedicated wildlife garden and we are so much more fortunate than lots of other schools. However our outdoor spaces are being under utilised for outdoor learning across the curriculum and it has been my aim to try and develop this.

Firstly, at the recent STEM Summit that six of our pupils attended at Hilderthorpe School, which I recently blogged about, JP developers committed to providing and delivering free materials to complete a large scale bug hotel on receipt of our design. Secondly our application to receive free trees throught the Woodland Trust Scheme was approved. In March we will take delivery of a selection of rowan, silver birch and cherry trees to create a small copse in an area of our school field. Then we heard that we were successful in on our bid to receive a Local School Nature Grant Award. This will bring us an amazing variety of resources to the value of £500 and includes a wildlife camera with night vision, bird feeding stations, a frog/toad hotel, a forest floor mat to sit on, a tarpaulin to create a den and other bits and pieces! We are very excited about this. Also as part of the the award, members of staff will be wrapping up warmly in January to attend a two-hour on site training session on outdoor learning. Finally we have just heard this week that out application that was submitted quite some time ago to receive bird boxes and a camera through Dogger Bank Wind Farm funding.

All of these things will put us in a very strong position as a school to develop our existing outdoor areas and enhance learning provision throughout the school. We will be looking for community volunteers to help us in the garden and with the tree planting so watch this space!

For the last week of the year 5/6 STEM Club, we were investigating hard and soft water. We looked at a map of the UK and ascertained that the water in the East Riding area is predominantly hard water. We discussed the problems that this can have for the environment, for industry and even in our own homes. We decided that we would check different water sources within school to verify if the water was indeed hard. We also wanted to collect a sample from the pond in our wildlife garden in order to compare a natural source of water with water supplies within school. We used proprietary testing strips to check water from the classroom taps, staffroom sink tap, taps in the pupil toilets and even Mrs Altoft’s aquarium in class 4! We then ventured outside to check the pond. The pupils enjoyed taking their samples and the test strips did verify that we live in a hard water area. The pupils recorded their results in a table showing that they could apply skills learnt in the classroom. We thought that it might be quite fun to send test strips to relatives in other areas of the country where the map showed us that the water should be soft. After Christmas we will be sending strips to Whitby in North Yorkshire, Basingstoke in Hampshire and Ayton in Berwickshire to see what we can find out.