Yarborough Primary School held a Science Day at the school on March 9th 2004 during which the whole day was devoted to the exploration of various different scientific activities.
The aim of the day was largely about developing a whole school approach to investigative science and about putting Excellence and Enjoyment into practice (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/primarydocument/). Indeed, teachers noted that during the day some of the more disaffected boys experienced no behavioural problems at all.

The school was divided into three areas, Nursery, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. The children were split into small groups and visited each activity in their area throughout the day. Many of the activities incorporated an element of ICT such as interactive whiteboards, sensors, graphing programs, computer-controlled microscopes, time lapse movies and internet-based activities, as this enabled the children to experience different learning opportunities. Parents, grandparents and friends were encouraged to ‘lend a hand’ to ensure that plenty of support was available for the children doing their experiments. This gave the day a wonderful atmosphere and everyone, children, parents, grandparents, friends, teaching assistants and teachers alike learned something new! Each child in the school was presented with a science certificate at the end of the day. Since the science day pupils and teachers have been making suggestions for other whole school subject days, the favourite being history up to now!

The activities for the different areas are listed below:

• whiteboard – sorting living/ not living/children to sort pictures using flip chart
• Sammy’s science house – light/dark/shadow house
• Drawing a growing bulb - observation
• Materials – sieving
• Forces – marbles on a ramp
• Sound – musical instruments quiet/loud
• Senses – binary tree to sort fruit then children to taste

• Forces – floating and sinking in water tray consolidate with sorting pictures
• Bubbles – could record by drawing
• Super structures using spaghetti and marshmallows

• whiteboard – branching database (Granada Branch) – to classify minibeasts/move onto looking at pictures and making their own branching database
• whiteboard – Sammy’s science house (forces) as an introduction. Use pixie connected to truck and fill with marbles to find out the effect

• datalogger – sunglasses experiment

• microscope – materials looking at different materials (coffee, sugar, fabrics, dried fruit)

• fruit friction – rolling fruit down a bench along a numberline, prediction using a marker, graph results onto a simple graphing program (Infant toolbox) for discussion
• super structures – spaghetti and marshmallows

• electricity – making a circuit / lemon battery
• Dissolving – oil and water etc.
• Mr Zippy’s trainers
• Sorting materials
• Superb sounds (ASE)

• Rocks sorting and classifying
• Measuring sounds (Y3 ecolog)

• Magnetic fun

• Making music
• Cooling water

• Will it float?
• Looking at microbes

• Water drop challenge
• Body changes/exercise
• Electricity
• Super structures

• Changing materials – volcanoes

• Click here to listen to a discussion about how the datalogger supported their understanding of sound.
  
• Click here to listen to a discussion about how the children felt about being involved in the science day