How to run a science club
The Scientific Connection
Learning to think like scientists
A well organised science club can enable children to begin to think and act like scientists.
Scientists:
- discuss the ideas for their experiments - before they start and as they work
- plan their experiments
- ask questions - of each other, and themselves
- change their experiments - they find something out, and then have another question to answer
- work together, in small and large groups, often with different groups having different roles
- tell each other about their results
Setting science in context
Scientists and engineers ask questions about real situations, and solve real problems. It is ideal if you can mirror this in your science club. There are many ways you can do this, the trick is to find a real life situation that links to the topic(s) you are aiming to cover.
In the video clip, the science club organiser is explaining the background to a real life situation. Aunt Stella has an umbrella that has holes in it and needs the children's help to find a material that will be able to mend the hole. The children are all set to investigate...
Reading the story umbrella
Audio recording from Sarah Walton (33 sec)
- Sarah Walton, Biologist and GSK Science & Engineering Ambassador
- Setting a challenge in a context really gets them to relate to things that they are familiar with. For instance, the Tumbling toasts investigation that we did. Everyone on occasions has dropped toast on the floor and again more time than not it has landed buttered side down. And they learn why that was and why it happened more often than not and how to think of it scientifically which most people wouldn't even consider toast tumbling on the floor as anything to do with science so it's great to get them thinking about science in a way that is familiar to them and there's a nice story to go with it.