Science clubs

How to run a science club

The Scientific Connection
The Scientific Connection continues

Scientist point of view

Sarah Walton is a biologist working at GlaxoSmithKline. As a Science and Engineering Ambassador she runs a science club with the support of a teacher. In these audio clips, Sarah describes how being part of a science club enables pupils to learn to think and act like scientists.

Sarah Walton, Biologist and GSK Science & Engineering Ambassador

They have also got to start and think when they are setting up their experiments; what their aim of the experiments was, which you obviously do as a scientist, what material they are going to use, how they are actually going to do the experiments, what method they are going to use and then onto getting their results, making sure it's a fair test and they've got the right controls in and then obviously how they are going to display their results and obviously at the end discussing and summarising their results. I think it's a really good way of getting them interested in science and doing things in a more scientific way and I think when these particular children go to secondary school, they've got a lot of this information that they will use probably in their science lesson at secondary school as well.

Sarah Walton, Biologist and GSK Science & Engineering Ambassador

The girls in the science clubs, at the start of the science club the girls were very introverted and didn't really participate in the discussion as much as the boys. But towards the middle and definitely by the end the girls were just as confident as the boys to put their hands up and ask and answer questions. As far as the CREST Investigators scenarios, they all enjoyed the scenarios, the girls as well as the boys and I don't think any particular sex enjoy the scenario any better than the other one. But definitely for getting girls interested in science and more confident in science, it has been a really good experience.

What the children think

What do children think about belonging to a science club?

I enjoy coming to science club because it's fun and we do different things and learn different things every week.

During science club, we plan our investigation, get our equipment, do our investigation and record our results on a piece of paper. Sometime the plan doesn't go well, sometimes it does.