New opportunities: GET North resources, Whole School Gender Equality, Computing resource grants

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If you’re the sort of person who’s involved and engaged with NUSTEM’s work, these opportunities might be right up your street:

Great Exhibition of the North Teaching Resource Creators

The team running GET North 2018 are looking for help developing teaching resource packs for use across England at Key Stages 2 and 3. Separate packs will be produced to tie into the themes of the Exhibition:

  • KS2: Science, Art and Design, and Design and Technology
  • KS3: Computing, English, and Design and Technology

The organisers are looking to recruit resource creators; professionals who can provide current industry context and support to the resource; and SEN consultants.

Interested? Get the full details and the application form at the GET North website. Deadline 12 noon, 1st December.

IOP Whole School Gender Equality Programme

The Institute of Physics have a long-running project looking at improving gender balance in physics. Their reports and research are valuable and highly influential (they’ve been a key influence on NUSTEM, for example!). Currently 40 schools are part of a whole-school programme, making small changes in their environment which can lead to big changes in student outlook. Funding has recently been secured to expand this programme.

Participating schools will receive whole-school CPD on unconscious bias and gender equality; can nominate a Gender Champion to attend a free 2-day residential course; and will have access to funding to support further work, including dissemination to other schools and partners.

For further details and the contact email through which to express an interest, see the IOP’s website. Also, do keep us informed (nustem@northumbria.ac.uk), as we’re keen to assist in these efforts ourselves.

Community Foundation Raspberry Pi kit funding

This just in… the Community Foundation have up to £2,000 available to support the purchase of Raspberry Pi kits and CPD by primary schools, as part of a new project launched recently by Make Stuff NE and Tech for Life. For more information and to apply for funding, click those links. At the time of writing things aren’t quite working correctly; we think the relevant grant scheme may be this one, in which case it’s a very straightforward (online) form.

Primary Science Coordinators’ Forum #3.1

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Part of NUSTEM’s offer to primary schools in the north east is our Primary Science Coordinators’ Forum. Each half term, science leaders from primary schools across the area come to our Think Lab at Northumbria University for two hours of skills sharing, networking and high-quality STEM CPD. We’re in our third year of sessions, and it’s about time I shared what we’ve been up to. Here’s a run-down of our most recent meeting, which was held on Tuesday 21st November. If you’re interested in joining the forum (it’s free!), email me.

Part 1: Background and that awkward “getting to know each other” bit

Our first meeting this academic year, so there were a few new faces in the room. This being a skills sharing/networking forum, it’s important (I think) that we go through the basics: Who are we? What do we do? Why are we here? One day I’ll find a less awkward way of doing this. I also shared a bit of background about who and what NUSTEM is.

Part 2: Sharing Science

We have a wealth of experience in STEM education at NUSTEM, but so many good ideas come from teachers working in schools. In this session, teachers shared some of their more creative science resources and approaches. In the spirit of sharing good practice, here they are:

  • Greg (Oakfield Infants) – at the start of the year, groups of children in Greg’s Y1 class adopt trees in the school grounds. Throughout the year, they take photos and note changes to their tree. The exercise also inspires creative writing, poetry and artwork whilst covering the seasonal changes part of the science curriculum.
  • Mark (Carville) – shared an activity he’d seen using laces and cocktail sticks to discuss DNA in Y6.
  • Denise (Oakfield) – Denise’s class explored the digestive system using a pair of tights and then created a comic strip about the topic.
  • Ellie – Ellie’s class have been exploring rock types using different chocolate bars – you can find a similar activity from the National Parks UK here.
  • Kaye (St Charles RC) – Kaye’s school is using Imperial College’s Reach Out for free, quick science CPD for her staff. Kaye has also been exploring life cycles, by bringing mealworms into her classroom and changing different conditions of their habitats. It takes a few weeks, but they eventually turn into beetles. I’ve found a useful worksheet for this activity here.
  • Karen (Battle Hill) – Karen shared a free online resource from the Wellcome Trust called Explorify. It has great starters and activities for getting science discussion into the classroom.
  • Joe (NUSTEM) – I shared two activities, a Turtles and Dogs activity using soft toys to explore adaptation and inheritance with Y6, and a new activity with the working title: What’s in the Box?. I’ll post a link to this activity shortly.

Part 3: Cubetto

Our office fell in love with these little Cubetto robots, which arrived over the summer holidays, and we’ve been itching to get them into the hands of our science coordinators to see what wonderful ideas they might come up with. We spent half an hour playing with them last night and have some exciting thoughts about their use in the classroom. We’re holding further Cubetto exploration sessions next week with Computing and EYFS leads in our partner schools with a view to developing a suite of workshops that will allow EYFS children to explore coding in new and exciting ways. The plan is to loan our army of robots out to schools from the New Year.

Part 4: Embedding careers in primary science

The NUSTEM project builds on the findings of the ASPIRES report (more about that here). Using the Science Capital approach, we’re looking to increase young children’s understanding of what STEM is and where it can lead. The coordinators in our last session spent some time discussing an approach for embedding STEM careers into primary science lessons. This is a project and supporting resource that we’re looking to roll out into school in the New Year. If you are interested in finding out more, drop me an email.

Finally: Come and join us

We’re always looking for new members. If you’d like to join the group (it’s free and you get sandwiches) please email me. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 24 January 2018, 5-7pm.

To download the presentation notes from the session, click here.

Family Space Explorers

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We’re always looking for new ways to engage different audiences, and this winter our Family Space Explorers project is doing just that. Funded by the UK Space Agency, we’re engaging young children and their families with space science through STEM story workshops and hands-on activities in libraries across the north east.

Why families?

As a project, we believe that one way of addressing the STEM skills shortage is through long-term interventions. We want STEM conversations happening at home, amongst young families, so that when children later come to make career-critical subject choices they already have a wealth of experience and family support to guide their decisions. The Family Space Explorers workshops are aimed at children aged 2-5, along with their families. They’re carefully planned to help parents and carers build their confidence in exploring science and engineering topics with their child.

Why libraries?

Most of NUSTEM’s work is delivered via our partner schools, which are drawn from the local area. For some families, entering a school can itself be a barrier to engagement. Working in local libraries and community centres (along with schools!), in areas of higher socio-economic deprivation, we hope to reach a greater number and variety of families.

The Workshops

We’ve developed two workshops, each with activities linked to books for young children. The sessions are each 45 minutes long and involve shared reading and activities. At the end of each session, participants get to keep a copy of the book, so they can continue the reading and activities at home.

Choosing the stories was difficult. We aim to embed diversity and equality throughout our work, and it was tricky to find stories that had strong female lead characters. In book after book we found male characters (children and adults) heading into space… with very little representation from female characters.

We chose “Goodnight Spaceman” because of its charming story and strong links to the UK Space Agency. We also wrote our own book, “Are we nearly there yet?” to explore space exploration through non-fiction, which allowed us to cast a female lead character in the shape of a robot explorer. We also put together a list of other good STEM stories, which you can find at our Family Space Explorers page.

Linking activities

It’s important that our workshops can be repeatable by families at home – we want the interventions to continue beyond the end of the workshop. In the workshops, families use Duplo to build their own version of a space rocket to travel to the International Space Station, and a rover to explore the surface of Mars. The simplicity of the activities enable parents to continue constructive play at home, and to adopt similar approaches with other stories.

Supporting local schools

We’re sending a copy of our book to schools across the region, and inviting teachers and educators who work with young children to attend our two free training sessions. These sessions will equip teachers to deliver the sessions in their own schools.

How to get involved

We have a number of sessions booked into our calendar over the next few months. If you have children aged 2-5 and you’d like to attend, click here to view upcoming sessions and find details of how to book onto the events.