How to run a science club
The experiences of science clubs leaders
We interviewed three science club leaders about their experiences running a science club
- Jeannine Shardlow, Primary Science AST
-
I'm Jeannine Shardlow, a Primary Science AST at Joseph Lancaster Primary School in Southwark.
With Tania Ferendinos, I run the CREST
Investigators Science Club on a Thursday evening
for our Year 6 pupils. We have 14 of them who attend regularly. And we're using the materials
mainly because we want to promote the process skills of science investigation.
- Sarah Walton, Science and Engineering Ambassador, running a science club
- Hi, I'm Sarah Walton and I'm a GSK Science & Engineering Ambassador. I work with a school in Stevenage called St Vincent De Paul which is a primary school and the science club is run once a week and runs for 12 weeks. It was on for 2 hours each time and there were 14 children and they were chosen by their form tutor as the more gifted children at science. They were Year 5 and there's a mixture of boys and girls. I run the club myself with the help of the school's science co-ordinator.
I started our science club about 3 years ago, initially as an option for KS2 pupils during the school day. The idea was just to do something fun and educational (no writing, etc) for 1 hour a week. As it seemed a popular choice, I decided to set up an after-school club (called SciTech) for children to do science and technology activities, for 1 hour a week (booked termly).
I initially envisaged 10-12 children, but within the first term numbers headed over 20. As popularity increased further, the only option seemed to be running it on two evenings a week (parallel actvities) - and this gave me the chance to split roughly into Yr3/4 and Yr5/6 age groups, and between 15 and 18 children attend each (this is just under 50% of each year group!).
This has enabled me to run the same activities, but target my explanations and assistance to each age group better. The emphasis is still very much on scientific exploration, but without the formal structure of planning, results, conclusions, etc.
We do a lot of investigating materials ( e.g.slime and other polymers, simple reactions), scientific techniques (e.g. chromatography), testing designs (paper planes, elastic band vehicles, boats, robots), building structures (spaghetti, paper/straw towers etc). Some activities work better than others!
Because we charge for the club, all money raised is used to purchase materials (and some fantastic equipment that I can also use in regular lessons - like an air compressor to launch paper rockets hundreds of feet into the air) which does mean we are very well resourced and there are a lot of 'take-home' activities, but there are also many activities that use very little material other than junk or 'kitchen chemistry' experiments.
One of reasons the children love it is that it's very hands-on and much less formal than lessons, but the science is still there and is remembered! I try to have a few demos with real 'wow' factor, such as making elephant's toothpaste inside a pumpkin, and using dry ice is always a hit!
I can honestly say that I love running the clubs!Sue Martin is a Deputy Headteacher who runs a science club
Next, explore "The Scientific Connection", or go back to "How to run a science club in your school" if you were not yet finished with that page.