British Science Week
29 March 2018
British Science Week is a ten day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths subjects (STEM) and took place between 9 – 18 March 2018. Primary schools want to embrace this and therefore March was a busy month for our volunteers delivering outreach activities to school children.
During the month CITER visited three schools; Christ the King R.C Primary School in Cardiff on the 12 March, Ninian Park Primary School on the 13 March and Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd on the 28 March. The first visit involved delivering our newest outreach activity; blast-a-biofilm to foundation and year one children. The second and third visit was to deliver our most popular workshop on “blood, bones and gory bits” to year five children .
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Bones and Organs activity at Ninian Park Primary School
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A group of children from Ninian Park Primary School learning about the medicinal uses of maggots and the lifecycle.
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A group of children at Ninian Park Primary School making their own "cells" as part of the Blood and Cells activity.
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A group of children at Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd learning about plasma and the function of red and white blood cells.
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A group of children taking part in the blast-a-biofilm activity at Christ the King R.C Primary school.
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A group of children at Christ the King R.C Primary school using toothbrushes to remove the "biofilm".
CITER was delighted to be able to deliver the workshop at Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd bilingually as two of the volunteers were fluent welsh speakers.
“It was great to be able to deliver the CITER activities bilingually. Both children and staff were grateful that parts of the activities were carried out through the medium of Welsh and it was clear that the children who spoke Welsh as their first language really appreciated this opportunity".
"It gave me an opportunity to present and discuss science in Welsh, in an informal setting, which I really enjoyed..... when I introduced myself as Lleucu in Welsh to one group, a few of the children even started singing a famous Welsh song, “Lleucu Llwyd” back to me, which was very unexpected but I thought was brilliant!"
The resource used for the activities were very engaging and motivating for the children......the pace of the activities was great – pupils stayed on task and interested for each activity – especially the maggot racing!
"I now know that maggots don't like the light"."I learnt that we have 206 bones in our body".I cant believe that three and a half litres of squash is the equivalent of about how much blood is in the body".
Many thanks to the PhD students for delivering these workshops including Adam Moore, Isabella Centeleghe, Alina Akhabetova, Steven Avery, Petar Markov, Thomas Davies, Erin Myles, Iwan Palmer, Lleucu Davies and Amy Codd together with our undergraduate members Joseph Thomson, Lora Jones, Nazneen Banji and Malini Halai.
Public engagement is a key part of CITER and this year's calendar is very busy. CITER would welcome volunteers to attend forthcoming public events and visit local Primary Schools; if you are interested please contact: