Diary Entry - February

January was a very busy month for Project Synergy, culminating in the Primary Science conference at Robert Smyth School. The day was attended by 225 local primary school children from the six schools taking part in the Project, plus 5 other smaller schools in the area. The children were treated to an opening speech by Project Synergy team member, Judith Green, based on the theme of “Earth”. Meanwhile, many of the parents stayed to listen to Paul Stone, another Project Synergy team member explain about the conference and the involvement with the Rolls-Royce project.

The children were divided into twelve groups, of mixed ages, schools and gender and they set off to their first workshop. The workshops on offer were wide and varied, from building bridges to redesigning paper aeroplanes to see if they could change direction or make them fly further. In one of the labs, the children made coloured slime, and then pulled and squeezed it to make a bouncing ball. The chemistry lab was alive with the sound of gunfire, as the children made gases and then ignited them! Down the corridor, children were using hairdryers to keep a ping pong ball floating in the air, and then tried to make it complete an obstacle course. Outside in the car park was a flight simulator, kindly manned by a local business, who also brought along a remote controlled manipulator arm and kits to build electronic dice.

 
The workshops were all designed and run by members of staff from the schools involved in the project, and included Teaching Assistants, Science coordinators, parents, staff and pupils from two local Upper schools, who also helped to direct the children around to the workshops. The children completed three workshops during the day, and then headed back to the main hall for a closing speech, again by the fabulous Judith Green. She had every single child, and adult, enthralled with her wonderful experiments using liquid nitrogen, and her fascinating facts and figures about space travel and the future of the Earth. The children were all then given a goody bag, kindly supported by Rosemary Conley and Rolls-Royce, to take with them as a memento of the day.

Here are some comments about the day from some of the children:

On Saturday 30th January, Robert Smyth School held a science conference which over 200 KS2 children attended. We were split into small groups of around 20 children and got to experiment with three different earth based activities. After an incredible introduction by Mrs Green, we went off to our first session. Jess Newcombe, Ellie Glyn-Smith and Rachel Mays went on the flight simulator and reported what it was like: “We found it fun and enjoyable but very cold. However it could have been faster but it was great because it wasn’t something you could do every day”. Many people made new friends and thought it was great how we mixed different schools together. Other activities were I’m H20 get me out of here, Slime Making, Bridge Blunder, Paper Aeroplanes, Explosions and many more. But the best part of the day had to be the finale, which ended with Mrs Green mixing liquid nitrogen and extremely boiling water, which ended up with clouds of steam
everywhere. It was amazing!

Written by Ellie and Rachel from year 6.

We think you can tell from their comments that they all had a superb day, and from the comments on their evaluation forms, they can’t wait until we do another one next year!

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