Oaks Bulletin 30.3.22

Welcome to the Science Faculty.  

The week commencing 14th March was British Science Week and we always do our best to acknowledge the week and use it as an extra

opportunity to promote science within school.

Mr. Gray is running a poster competition for all students in years 7-9. The deadline is Monday 28th March and we hope many students enter. We will select the best 5 to be submitted into the national competition. 

Good luck to all students! 

On Thursday 17th March we held a lunch time session to showcase some science investigations to make students go WOW! The science team showed a range of different demonstrations and we would like to thank all students who attended and got involved. Some students were so disappointed that they missed the fun that we plan to hold another session in the next couple of weeks. We will ensure students have plenty of notice and any student can attend. 

A range of form activities have also taken place so we would like to take the opportunity to thank all staff for their support of Science Week. 

International Womens Day 

This month has also seen the promotion of International Women’s Day on the 8th of March.  We were very lucky and had 4 of our female students from years 9 & 10 invited to take part in a STEM based event at Bentley. 

We were fortunate to be invited to take part in International Women’s Day celebrations. Jess, Emily, Evie and Serena had a great time at Bentley taking part in team building activities and learning about the apprenticeships that are on offer there. The afternoon was spent with practical tasks and our girls were able to participate in different tasks. Our team shone when they had to name all the car components. The apprentices who supported with this task said that our team was the quickest and most accurate they had seen. They learned about quality control, inspiring talks from women in traditional male roles and received technical advice on options for schools. It was a memorable and inspirational day for all. 

Mrs Hall 

This academic year has seen the faculty grow to include Health and Social Care. This is an option for students to select at GCSE. Last half term we provided a first aid day for our year 11 students as part of their course. They managed to complete the practical sections for their coursework and learnt valuable skills, that will not only help them to write up the other elements of their coursework, but will provide them with skills for the future. The external provider was very impressed with our students and the feedback from our students was overwhelmingly positive, they all really enjoyed the day. So well done to our year 11 Health & Social Care students.  

We have lots of extra opportunities at the moment for students to attend extra sessions for Science and Health and Social Care in school. Year 10 Health and Social Care students will be sitting their external exam this summer and Mr. Gray is offering extra intervention to prepare them for this. These sessions will run on a Tuesday lunch time each week and after school on a Tuesday week 2. Please encourage your child to attend to help boost their grade. 

It is currently a very important time for our year 11 students as they prepare to sit external exams in the summer term for all their subjects. To support them, we offer form time intervention on a Wednesday and Thursday, an after-school session on a Tuesday week 1 and last Saturday saw the launch of a Physics masterclass; 15 year 11 pupils attended which is absolutely fantastic.  Further Saturday sessions are planned. Coursework catch-up sessions run for Health and Social Care on a Wednesday week 1 after school. 

For our KS3 pupils we run a weekly STEM club. This gives pupils the opportunity to learn about some of the science topics that are not on the curriculum. We hope this club will grow and develop so we can enter competitions, both locally and nationally to showcase our amazing students. 

Please come along and give it a try!  

To help promote a love of science at an earlier age, the faculty has started to work with local primary schools to deliver the CREST award. 

Science Crest Award 

During the last half-term eight enthusiastic Year 7 students participated in the Discovery CREST award project. Each week for 6 weeks the students went to Wistaston Academy after school on a Monday to collaborate with Year 6 students. The students worked in teams of four to design a solution to provide hand-washing stations for communities in economically developing countries. The students researched the importance of handwashing in preventing the spread of disease and materials they could use for their design. 

Each team worked collaboratively to produce a model of their design, which they tested and evaluated to suggest improvements. It was fantastic to hear the year 7 students sharing their knowledge of particles and separating techniques with the year 6 students. 

All the students thoroughly enjoyed the projects and showed great enthusiasm, resilience, and leadership skills. They produce innovative, varying, and successful solutions to the problem set.  

All the students have successfully achieved the Discovery Crest award, it was a pleasure to work with the year 6 students at Wistaston Academy.    

 Well done to Millie C, Aimee D, Alesia D, Bronwyn H, Jessica H, Kaleb J, Krzysztof M and Noah S for being outstanding leaders and science ambassadors throughout the project. 

Science Crest Award

Celebrations

Star of the Week