British Science Week 2023

The theme for Science Week 2023 was ‘Connections’.

Nearly all innovations in science, technology, engineering and maths are built on connections between people; two (or more) heads are better than one, after all, but as well as exploring the importance and joy in connections between individual scientists, research groups and institutions, there are many ways connections appear across all areas of science. Evolution, for example, shows us the ways that animals, including humans, as well as well, plants and bacteria are all connected in a family tree stretching back millennia.

British Science Week at Hebden Royd

The children in the EYFS became Nature Detectives. They searched for wildlife in the school yard and our outdoor mud kitchen. They looked for different habitats and considered: What do different animals need to make a good home? What would happen to these animals if their homes were disturbed by people? What different parts of nature can you explore with your senses? What do you think wildlife means?

In Key Stage 1 the children investigated the importance of hand washing and basic hygiene. They used glitter to show how viruses can spread.

For Science week Year 3/4 learnt about connections in relation to the food we eat and the nutrition it gives us. They researched where their favourite foods came from, their nutritional value and how they are grown or produced and made posters about these.

They also looked at how far food travels and how to choose foods that are seasonal. They linked this to their design technology topic of eating seasonally, where they designed their own fruit or vegetable tart, making and eating these.

Year 3/4 also conducted a fun experiment to find out about taste buds. We counted the number of fungiform papillae on each others’ tongues to find out who had the strongest sense of taste.

Year 5/6 found out if white light truly is white. They used a spectrogram to split light, then drew what they saw in the spectrograms and found the answer; they could see all colours of the spectrum!