ASE 2016: Slides and Notes
NUSTEM attended the ASE conference in Birmingham to catch up on all the latest happenings in the Science Education world. We also ran three sessions and attended the Primary pop-up, and you can find the resources from the sessions below:
Gender Equity in Science
You might want to have a look at some of the resources on the NUSTEM site. We have a basic reading list which highlights publications that we’ve found useful in shaping our thinking about gender equity, as well as posts about other relevant reports. For the wider picture, you may also wish to explore the concept of ‘Science Capital‘.
Session slides: Gender Equity ASE2016 Presentation (800Kb PDF)
Primary Pop-Up
Did you make a lolly stick catapult? Or had I run out by the time you found the pop-up?
If you’re interested in finding out about cross-curricular links between Science and DT using levers, then you can find instructions about how to build catapults and more on this page.
Careers in Your Classroom
Putting careers at the heart of teaching is a key part of NUSTEM’s’ work with schools. If you want to see some examples of workshops where we’ve done this, then have a look at The Botanist and Medical Physics.
Worksheet and examples (100Kb PDF).
Session slides (1.5Mb PDF).
Science for Families
Parents are a key influence on children’s attitudes to science and future career choices. As part of the NUSTEM project, we are working to encourage parents and carers to talk about science together with their children. The Science for Families course is a five week after-school course, run in conjunction with local authorities and schools. During the course, families do science together and find out that not knowing the answer is part of what science is all about.
Session slides: Science For Families ASE2016 Presentation (600Kb PDF)
Here are the worksheets for the three activities that were used during the session.
Simple Mechanisms for Primary: Levers, Pulleys and Gears
Equipment ready for ASE On the move session.
Simple mechanisms have been part of the primary DT curriculum for some time. However, levers, pulleys and gears are now also in the primary science curriculum.
Here at Think Physics, we’ve a few suggestions about how primary teachers can link DT and science to develop cross-curricular themes. We started by looking at the science behind the three simple machines and then considered how to develop the science using the DT principles of Design, Make, Evaluate.
This included thinking about how we could use a coat hanger catapult to help the Gingerbread man across the river and how to get tomatoes down a hillside in Nepal using pulleys.
We’ve developed a CPD session which works through our ideas, and you are welcome to make use of the resources from the session.
Levers, pulleys and gears presentation
Household objects card-sort
Catapult building instructions
Useful links:
Clipbank. A short video of acrobats using a big lever to launch themselves into the air.
Imagination Factory. A resource which supports the teaching of simple machines with lots of simple practical ideas.
Squashed tomato challenge. An activity from Practical Action. Help your students see the real life use of the science they have been learning about. Excellent for STEM days and works for a wide age range.
Paper animations from Rob Ives. (£). A site all about paper animations for you and your students to build. Great to extend your keen students.
Heath Robinson machines (UK) or Rube Goldberg machines (USA). These can be described as complicated machines to solve simple tasks. Building one of these machines as the final activity of a unit on simple machines would be a good challenge for your pupils.
Here is a lovely video by OK Go showing a Rube Goldberg machine – though I don’t expect your pupils to be quite so complex.
This site from Connections Academy has some useful ideas about what your machines might include.
