Targets for November:
A busy month – CPD, STEM events,
planning and a trip to Derby! Staff met from across the trust
for a day of CPD linked to Enquiry led teaching. Teachers from across the
phases worked together on enquiry based projects and also received training on
how to use IPADs in lessons to promote enquiry. It was great to plan
investigations with our primary and middle school staff and share ideas. The
feedback from evaluation forms was extremely positive – many of the staff
enjoyed the variety of ideas that they could take back into the classroom and
said that it had made them think about how to change the focus of the lessons
so that it was more student led. On the 14th November we hosted a Year 7/8 gifted and talented
day for students from across Bury St Edmunds. We were overwhelmed by the
response from the schools (each middle school in town was represented – not
just our immediate trust). 72 students worked together on an engineering
project that saw them planning and constructing a chain reaction using only the
equipment given to them. They had to use five different scientific ideas within
their sequence (such as pulleys, levers, electromagnets, chemical reactions
etc) to snuff out a candle with the sequence beginning with a simple blow. It
was astounding to see the variety of ideas that the students had and it was
exciting to see how the students dealt with set backs and problems during the
day. The adapted plans, amended constructions and solved problems as teams.
Thank you to all the middle school staff that emailed me after the event with
their comments – all had said that the students had gone back to school
enthused and excited by the activity. The buzz that day was absolutely amazing
– the smile on students when they actually got their sequences to work and the
cries of ‘YES we did it!’ was something I will remember for a long time to
come.
The
staff from across have also been busy finalising the plans for our main
December event – this will be a CHaOs event. Students from Year 4 – 8 will be
joining us at the upper school to take part in a hands on science engagement
day. University students from Cambridge will be running workshops with lots of
bangs, crashes and messy science. They will also be working with our Science
Captains in year 12/13, giving the students the opportunity to ask the
undergraduates questions about careers and university. Planning
for the STEM festival is going really well, I have been amazed with the number
of local industries that have already agreed to run a workshop at the festival.
I also had the pleasure of attending the Science Prize award evening on 10th
November – what an inspiring evening! All of last year’s entries gave me food
for thought for our own project. The trip to Derby was also really exciting – I
personally loved the LEGO Trent engine.
  Staff CPD Year 7/8 day Targets for December:
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