British Science Week 2022 in Year 4!

This week at St. Vincent’s we celebrated British Science Week! The theme of this year’s Science Week was growth and Year 4 enjoyed a range of activities all about growth and growing!

Each class took part in their own class experiment and a whole school experiment.

Year 4’s class experiment was to create an outdoor gym. Doing physical exercise is important for everyone’s growth and development and brings a lot of health benefits for us. The challenge was to create an activity, that anyone, of any age or ability could use in an outdoor space to exercise easily. We used some equipment that can be bought inexpensively and tried to be as creative as possible to create a fun activity which encourages physical exercise for our growth. a ‘leader’ from each group then stayed at the activity to teach other groups how to use the activity as we enjoyed a carousel to try out the other group’s ideas.

For our whole school experiment we investigated the question: ‘how can bacteria create the growth of mould on bread?’. To do this, we took 4 slices of bread and used different hands to touch the bread and see if it grew mould! 3 volunteers cleaned  (or did not clean!) their hands in different ways:

Slice 1: Untouched (we used gloves!)

Slice 2: Touched with unwashed hands

Slice 3: Touched with washed hands-using soap

Slice 4: Touch with hands which have been cleaned by hand sanitiser

Some of our bread was growing mould by Friday, but we will have to wait a while longer to see the full extent of how the bacteria affected the mould growth on the bread.

The class also had a go at planting their own runner beans! We used soil, pots and water to begin the growth of a new plant. The class got to take these plants home so that they could look after them, and observe first hand the life cycle of a plant growing.

For homework some pupils took part in a poster competition and there were some outstanding entries! The pupils thought carefully about how they could represent ‘growth’ and there were very creative interpretations! Well done, I can not wait to see who won the prize in assembly!

Throughout the week we learnt that there are many different types of growth-growth of plants and animals, the growth of healthier habits and ideas, as well as a growth mindset!

Thank you to Ms Drury for planning such fun and exciting activities for us to celebrate this special week!

Well done Year 4 for all of your brilliant work this week.

What was something you learnt during Science Week?