The benefits
The benefits of running a science club
Continued
- Jeannine from Joseph Lancaster
- We have here a very high number of children with English as an additional language. So, the challenge would always be in the writing and so the differentiation in the classroom would need to be undertaken to access these children to science. But working in a club environment, children are not required to do the formal writing that is the hurdle to their learning in the classroom. So, we focus very heavily on discussion and the ability and the right to have an opinion and to have that opinion respected. And to have the opportunity to discuss what they think in a very high risk environment where they know that they are safe. So, rather they take high risk because they know that they are safe. So, there is no ridicule and that way, the lower attaining children are actually flourishing in science. So, where they may not be strong in their literacy skills and numeracy skills, there is no limit to what they can do in science. That's why I'm in particular wanted to pick up science club as oppose to anything else.
The benefits of running a Science Club are simply numerous! I found it instantly raised the profile of Science as a subject in the school.
The key to its success is in choosing activities that are stimulating and exciting. I use both hands-on activities for the children (this dominates the time) and, where possible, highly visual demonstrations to capture attention and spark interest.
Because the children often leave the club with something to take away (some slime, a model they've made, etc.) they go away discussing the activities with their friends and family, again raising the profile of the subject and also the desire to belong to the club. The big knock-on effect is that children arrive in Science lessons keen to learn more and we have seen a huge rise in the number of children achieving Level 5 at the end of KS2.
I have the help of 2 secondary school pupils (my daughters!) who have also benefited from the experience (gaining Science Communicator awards) and would recommend additional 'free' assistance as my KS2 children relate well to older children.Sue Martin, Deputy Headteacher
Talbot House School on the benefits of running a science club
- Sarah Walton, Biologist and GSK Science & Engineering Ambassador
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Benefits of a science club to children:
- it gets them interested in science from an early age
- it teachers them that science is all around them and it's happening all the time
- it gets them to approach experiments in a more scientific way, putting in different controls and making sure that there's fair testing, recording information and getting them to do it in a more scientific way how to best display their results, thinking how many times you have to an experiment to check that the results haven't just occurred just by chance and discussing their experiments with the other children
- working in teams have been great because they have to organise between them what to do, discuss how to solve problems between themselves and how to approach the investigation, sharing their results and obviously discussing their results with their team members and summarising their results
- it also taught them about trouble-shooting; how sometimes you have to change the way you are investigating things because of lack of results or unforeseen circumstances. One of the more interesting one that we did was the Worm charming and that didn't work at all on the pieces of grass that we chose and the children had to think about where else we could do it on the playground and we actually ended up doing it near the flower beds in the playground and we got some worms from doing that. That was actually great because it shows that experiments don't always work the way as you think they might.
- Overall, I think it has given them a lot of confidence in their own thoughts and how to communicate things scientifically to different groups of people.