Hello everyone,
What a fantastic week we had for British Science Week last week. The boys and girls really enjoyed having some visitors in to tell us all about their STEM careers and they had a great time taking part in different science activities throughout the week and during our Friday science afternoon.
First of all, the whole school would like to thank our fantastic visitors that we had throughout the week. We really enjoyed learning about all the exciting things you do in your jobs and it has definitely inspired a lot of us! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us.
Each stage took part in different activities throughout the week to celebrate science. Some of these were related to this year’s Science Week theme, which was growth.
Primary 1 had a science filled week with lots of investigations. They made boats from different materials to see if they would float or sink. They also discussed why some designs were better than others and what they could do to adapt them. They discussed gravity and made helicopter spinners. Primary 1 also looked at the weather and the are planning on recording the weather over a period of time. They enjoyed making tornadoes in a bottle. On Friday afternoon, they made their own greenhouse gloves where they planted some different seeds. They will be watching them closely to see which seeds grow first. They also enjoyed their engineer visits.
Primary 2 have been continuing their car engineering project. They have been interested in learning all about how cutting down trees affects the habitats of the wildlife in the area. In class they have been investigating this in the Rainforest, however on Friday they explored the wildlife on the school field and discussed how cutting down trees would affect these animals. They made a bar chart to show what they found and have been creating posters to persuade people to look after the environment. They loved having an engineer and a pilot in to speak to them.
Primary 3 have been learning about the body and liked making working models of the heart. They loved having engineers in to tell them all about their jobs. For science afternoon they investigated different optical illusions. They had a look at the Jastrow and Ebbinghaus illusions and then went on to make their own spinning illusions. Have a look at their blog post about this here:
Fun with Illusions | Primary 3 – Bishopton Primary School (glowscotland.org.uk)
Primary 4 have been making their own magnet games! They designed them and have begun the building process. For science week, they loved extracting DNA from a strawberry. They were able to use an extraction buffer (a mixture of washing up liquid, salt and water) to extract the DNA from the cells of the strawberries. They really enjoyed their engineer visits.
Primary 5 have been working on becoming mini David Attenboroughs. As they have been learning about classification, they have been creating their own wildlife documentaries. They worked hard to create their documentaries in the style of David Attenborough and were passionate about the welfare of the different animals. They also enjoyed their engineer visit.
Primary 6 spent science afternoon creating anemometers to measure the speed of the wind. They created them themselves and then tested them out in the playground. They made their own wind speed predictions before testing the wind in different areas of the playground. They enjoyed their visit from a Thermal Fisher employee.
Primary 7 are very passionate about sustainability and have been relating this to what they eat and investigating food miles. They discussed the sustainability and food miles of different fruits before having a taste test! They were surprised to discover that a lychee has the most natural sugars.
The boys and girls had a fantastic week and used their investigation, enquiry, questioning and creative skills to take part in different science activities. Once again, thank you so much to all our visitors.
