science week

[RosalieL]

Is anyone doing science week this year? Every year I am disappointed at the lack of attention it gets. Next year I am determined to promote it at my school and hopefully get it up and running as a "thing" every year. As soon as the theme is released (I assume at the end of this week?) I will put it on the school calendar for next year. Any tips on how to start?

[Nads343]

Yes! We do! It's my first Science Week (I'm a new labbie) and we put a budget aside for experiments and prizes for the students. It's a pretty big deal at this school. We stick to the annual theme of National Science Week and the lab tech then creates experiments relevant to the theme, creating powerpoints, games, activities, experiments etc for the teachers. Each class has time in the lab throughout the week to do their experiments and there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes for each class. The experiments have a competition element to it so students need to compete to win the prizes.
I've been wrapping gifts during the past week!

Talk to your principal or HT about putting a budget aside each year for prizes and materials for experiments and go from there. Happy to help in any way I can!

[RosalieL]

Thank you! I have emailed "higher up" and asked if we can have it put on the school calendar with possibilities for activities to be discussed later (after the theme is released).

[Nads343]

You're welcome! I hope they approve it!
National Science Week creates a resource book every year with experiments and information on the annual topic too, so if you're stuck coming up with ideas, it's a handy resource to have

[RosalieL]

Every year I look at it too late and think "we could have done....". I think being in a Prep-yr12 school it gets overshadowed by book week usually being the week after. We also had a turnover of science staff (small school - only 3 science teachers!) and so they are all new since I started here 4 years ago. One started the same time as me and the others only this year. Hopefully now we have a bit of stability I can make it happen!

[LabbieSeth]

We also held a STEM Night last Wednesday and invited everyone from the community. Turn out was awesome with a lot of the students and their families coming along, as well as teachers from other schools and locals who just wanted to see what we have to offer. We had a number of different things running that night, for example, we had a bunch of pracs/models/diagrams set up in our hall for everyone to come through and participate in as well as ask questions, etc, as we had our respective teachers walking them through it all. It was great as it allowed us to involve people who aren't usually involved in the 'fun' side of science or science at all. It also allowed us to show all the models, etc, we spend so much money on. Other faculties ran their own stations for their aspects of STEM. We also had the Astronomical Society from Western Sydney University come out and set up some telescopes to view the stars and the moon from our oval, and a company (can't remember the name) set up a planetarium that walked through the early stages of the Solar System.
We also ran a BBQ so our guests had the ability to get a sausage sizzle and a can of drink. This covered the cost of the entire night. Prior to this, the cost of everything came out of the Science Faculty budget.

[RosalieL]

Wow! That sounds amazing! That's a great idea to do a night thing as well. It is an idea we can probably work up to. Having science week recognised will be a good start!! haha

[LabbieSeth]

Wow! That sounds amazing! That's a great idea to do a night thing as well. It is an idea we can probably work up to. Having science week recognised will be a good start!! haha

That's very true! Baby Steps! It has taken us a few years to get that night to become what it was. Started off with an assembly dedicated to science week and what it is about (that was a few years ago). Then we had our first science night last year which was essentially a lesser version of what we had this year. Next year we are planning on making it a STEAM night so it just keeps getting bigger and bigger!

[mtg]

Here it depends on the teachers. Some years we do staff morning tea with the current theme, quizzes etc and student lunch time activities. This year we only did the escape room through Stile.