Diary Entry - September

Natural History Museum

Twenty four gifted and talented students along with the Prenton Rolls Royce team visited London on the 18th December.  It was a very long day 5:30am - 11:30pm.  However it was well worth it.  Students were kept very busy with Science .
 
First a visit to the "From the Beginning Gallery", a creative way of showing the time scale of how the earth and then life on earth evolved.  It gave us plenty of ideas for follow up projects.
This was followed by - "The Big Idea" - the Darwin Exhibition.  We all felt very privileged to actually see Darwin's notebooks and specimens.  The Mockingbirds at the start of the exhibit along with many personal items really brought the character of Darwin alive.  The wall of skulls was particularly interesting to the students as several of the skulls had been studied in our workshop on facial reconstruction.
We rushed from there to museums own Great Debate workshop.  The students worked in groups,  to recreate the debate surrounding the publication of On the Origin of Species , becoming key historic characters, searching for evidence within the museum to support their standpoint.   A great way to explore How Science Works - how theory relates to evidence and how social context can affect the development and acceptance of scientific theory.  The students did very well and the end debate was a lively and entertaining spectacle!

Finally as a reward for all the concentrated effort the students had put in, we all went ice skating in the grounds of the museum - well it was Christmas time!  Now students have the task of collecting and planning their short film that they will make in the New Year with the CLC - The Learning Lighthouse.  More about this next month.

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