Maths and Science Faculty

Faculty Newsletter

Faculty Newsletter 2018

Science Ambassadors

Jack, Aayat, Katie, Joe, Kailan, Aroosa, Finley, Florence, Lily, Ruby

This team of Terrificccc scientists will help the school to follow our principles for scientific learning.

March 2019

We are very fortunate to have strong links with GSK in Stevenage. Emma Richardson, a Trotts Hill parent and governor, posed an exciting challenge for our would-be engineers in Years 5 and 6. Using Knex, they were tasked with creating a flying machine of the past, present or future. The activity fulfilled many of our Terrificccc princples – fun, inspire, creative, communicate, collaborate.

Unfortunately, we could only put forward one winner from each year group to go forward to the county competition, although there was an impressive number of contenders for the top spot.

Congratulations to Blake and Jake in Year 5 and Ruby and C in Year 6. Blake said, ” I found the challenge easy as I have Knex at home and my brother is studying mechanical engineering at GCSE.” Joscelyn (who secured 3rd place with EH) said, “It was a little bit hard but I really like building things. I would like do engineering in the future.”

: Year 6 winners Ruby and partner

: Year 5 winners Blake and Jake

March 2019

Pupils in KS2 have entered a Setpoint Herfordshire paper engineering challenge to create a beautiful bird. They had one hour to design and make the bird using a template of shapes. The children’s creativity is amazing.

: Year 4

: Year 5

: Year 5

: Year 6

January 2019

A pop-up science club saw the Scence Ambassadors and fellow KS2 pupils investigating fingerprints. Florence commented that she didn’t realise finger prints could be classified into three distinct types.

December 2018

In seasonal mood, the whole school investigated fake snow – a synthetic polymer with super absorbent properties. In many classes, the children followed their own lines of inquiry. They wanted to know what would happen to it, whether it would change depending on where it was placed, whether food colouring or the surface area of the bowl would affect it. Some samples were mixed with salt and soap whilst others were placed in the freezer.

Observations were made over the course of the week. Linking with maths, the children presented their results in table and graph form and described what they noticed.

: Nursery

: Year 3

: Year 3

: Year 3

: Y4

: Year 5

: Year 5 food colouring

: Year 5 surface area

: Year 6

: Year 5 and 6

November 2018

Mad Science, in conjunction with Affinity Water, delivered a highly entertaining and informative assembly about water conservation, combining science with raising awareness about the need to carefully use the precious resource of water. The Science Amabassadors gave it a big thumbs up.