Sparking STEM

🙌 Check out these brilliant comics by @andthemicrobes.bsky.social
Brilliant for engaging children in microbiology.
🥳 Share with your children /students and broaden their ideas about #science!

Are you a #PhD, #Postdoc or #research fellow working in #STEM who wants to know more about inspiring children with #outreach?

Join me for a FREE 45-minute online session to find out if outreach with children is what you’re looking for.

welcome.sparkingstem.org/home?utm_sou...

Loved giving out our first AQA accredited Unit Award Scheme certificates! It’s wonderful to be able to give formal recognition of the skills and learning our students have shown! We’re in a trial phase and should have this available for all our students for September! 🥳

#outdoorstem

Beautiful day at Cresswell Crags today!

The joy of finding a high clay content soil to use as a ‘binding agent’ in the daub of your wattle and daub construction! 🤩

www.sparkingstem.org/outdoorstem....

#Sheffield #OutdoorSTEM #Outdoorlearning

Great teamwork and construction skills in Outdoor STEM today!

After mastering the method to produce as much carbon dioxide as we needed, the 11-16s Outdoor STEM group conducted a range of investigations to explore the properties and impacts of carbon dioxide 👏 😊☀️🌿🧪.

www.sparkingstem.org/outdoorstem....

#Sheffield #OutdoorSTEM #Outdoorlearning #STEM

There’s nothing like playing catch with a balloon of pure carbon dioxide to learn through experience how dense it is compared to air! Great to be back to Outdoor STEM!!

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#Sheffield #OutdoorSTEM #Outdoorlearning #homeeducation

A beautiful day for #Outdoor STEM! 😊🍃☀️

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#Sheffield #sheffield #sheffieldissuper #sheffieldhomeeducation

Look at this fantastic model of a carbon dioxide molecule made by one of the 8-12s Outdoor STEM students today! It even has the double bonds! 🥰

www.sparkingstem.org/outdoorstem....

#Sheffield #homeeducation #outdoorlearning #outdoorSTEM

A fantastic afternoon with all the Year 6 students at Totley Primary in our workshop about Linnaean Classification! The students met a weird and wonderful range of organisms from all the kingdoms and discovered how they’re classified to species 😃
#primaryschool #sheffield #sheffieldschools

It was wonderful to bring together fifteen #homeeducated children and eight #phd #science researchers this afternoon!
The children’s questions were so insightful and broad-thinking and the scientists really helped us all to learn so much about their varied research fields! 😃

Another fantastic day training these wonderful #PhD researchers on the ‘Effective Outreach with Children’ course! They did a brilliant job answering questions from year six students at @Totley Primary School this morning! 👏 🎉
#scicomm #outreach #science

Fantastic to meet more #PhD researchers from @GW4alliance today for another online ‘Effective Outreach With Children’ course. Today they’ve begun to translate their complex research into engaging, inspirational and enjoyable #outreach activities for children. Looking forward to more tomorrow!

I'm having a great time at the online Effective Outreach with Children course by @sparkingstem.bsky.social! Lots of useful principles for making one's science engaging for younger kids

Meet Skippy! Our Blue Mountain Jumping Spider! He likes light-bathing, eating fruit flies and polishing his beautiful iridescent green-blue mandibles! 🥰
Looking forward to introducing him to some primary school children in a few weeks in our ‘Arthropods’ curriculum enrichment workshop!

Fluorescing chlorophyll! Great work from today’s 8-12s Practical Science students!
As they waited for their photosynthesis experiments to work, they extracted chlorophyll from spinach and saw how good it is at absorbing energy from light!

The foxes feast well when we’ve been doing heart dissections in Practical Science! 🦊 ❤️

#STEM #Science #homeeducation #sheffield

Intense concentration in 8-12s Practical Science today as they used balances, measuring cylinders, and syringes accurately, to investigate rates of diffusion! Brilliant work everyone!

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#science #stem #homeed

Today’s 8-12s Practical Science students loved watching and measuring diffusion with our phenolphthalein spheres! So satisfying to watch the pink colour vanish as the vinegar diffused in!
www.sparkingstem.org/practical-sc...
#homeed #science #STEM

A friend and I found this beautiful male chaffinch yesterday, unable to fly or walk due to a hugely deformed leg (yes that’s its leg, poor thing)!
It seemed glad of the shelter and food we gave it and now it’s being well looked after at a wildlife sanctuary. 😊

So much fun in 8-12s Practical Science today as the students explored over twenty activities and demonstrations to learn about light dispersal, reflection, refraction, filtering and transmission!
#science #stem #homeed

So much fun in 8-12s Practical Science today as the students explored over twenty activities and demonstrations to learn about light dispersal, reflection, refraction, filtering and transmission!
#science #stem #homeed

So much fun in 8-12s Practical Science today as the students explored over twenty activities and demonstrations to learn about light dispersal, reflection, refraction, filtering and transmission!
#science #stem #homeed

So much fun in 8-12s Practical Science today as the students explored over twenty activities and demonstrations to learn about light dispersal, reflection, refraction, filtering and transmission!
#science #stem #homeed

The 11-16s Practical Science students explored the relationship between spring constant, force and extension today 😀
Consistent results on our group graph, found the limit of proportionality, and had lots of fun exploring spring constants by testing them in lots of weird and wonderful ways!!

Our ‘skills tree’ helped our 8-12s Practical Science students to choose how and if, they evidenced their learning about microscopy today ☺️
With individual ‘skill leaves’ they can choose to learn & evidence skills that are right for them. Low pressure = happy learners! They all chose lots!! 😀 #STEM

Loved getting back to our Practical Science sessions today! Today the 11-16s students developed their microscopy skills, some made slides to view onion cells and some their own cheek cells! Some learned to do microscope calculations and we all had lots of fun!
😃🔬

My visit to Boulby Underground Laboratory! 1.1km underground, learning about dark matter detectors like the ‘Button 30’ detector I’m standing next to here. It weighs over 50 tonnes and was built piece by piece in this ultra low radiation environment. Huge thanks to all for this amazing day! 😃😊

4.5 hours of fun with my boys and an igloo was born!! ❄️ 😀 Nearly called it a ‘dogloo’ but that just seemed wrong! 😂