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Year 5 All Day Space Workshop
Sixty enthusiastic Year 5 students attended the Space Exploration workshop on 5th April for the whole day with Dr Marchesini and Mrs McGrath.
The workshop began in the Hall where the students were introduced to space exploration as a tourism prospect for the future, followed by the launch of rockets outside on the Mezz. The students enjoyed making their rockets using Alka-Seltzer’s and water to see how far they could launch them in the air. They then returned to the Hall to create the Moon “cootie-catchers” following a discussion on what caused the phases of the Moon during a month.
Following the break, the students then split into two labs to build Solar ovens using pizza boxes, aluminium foil, black paper and cling film. They then set up the ovens to melt some marshmallows and chocolate using lamps as it was a bit of a cloudy day. These were quite complicated to make, but the students showed tremendous enthusiasm and resilience to build their ovens and all succeeded in the end.
Lunch was enjoyed and then many of the students participated in the Year 9 “Just Dance” session that was taking place in the Hall with Miss Abbott. Appearing somewhat nervous at first, the students soon took over the space and were confident to demonstrate all of the varied moves required.
The next task was to investigate the polymers in two brands of nappies at how good they were at absorbing water. The students enjoyed the messy process of extracting the polymers from each nappy and then applying controlled variables to ensure that each nappy was treated the same.
The final task was to construct a spectroscope to view wavelengths of light using a toilet roll, black paper and a CD.
The students enjoyed the day and all took part in the activities with enthusiasm and motivation to do well. There were lots of useful questions asked as well as great responses to the some of the problems that they had to address. All students took home their solar oven, spectroscope and Moon “cootie-catcher”, as well as a certificate to mark their attendance. Well done to all who participated.
