Abingdonian 2018

42 The Abingdonian Summer 2018 Abingdon Science Partnership The ASP has co-ordinated a huge variety of new and developing projects over the past year. This has included working with other schools, with the local community and with scientists on exciting schools’ outreach projects. We have provided opportunities for primary and secondary pupils from Abingdon and beyond, as well as hosting training for teachers offered by the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine, the Ogden Trust, the British Science Association and the National STEM Learning Centre. Some of the key projects are described here by those that have taken part. Primary School Science Club Every Tuesday after school, we have invited a group of local primary school children into the ASP Lab, with the aim of inspiring them to pursue a career in science, by teaching them interesting and fun scientific methods through experiments. For a month beforehand we would plan the lessons with a team of senior school pupils. We would also decide who would act as the leader and who would produce all the resources. The lessons that were the most enjoyable (as voted by the primary school pupils) were a fish dissection, making bottle rockets and making magnetic slime. All of these experiments were followed up with a presentation to teach the scientific principles at work in these experiments. This session actually led onto many of the boys involved entering for CREST awards, a novel scientific award which shows service to the STEM subjects, or crediting this for a DofE service activity. Colm Lambert, 6JFB GCSE Astronomy For the last two years the ASP ran an Astronomy GCSE class on a Thursday evening with Larkmead and John Mason schools, which culminated in an exam in June. Mr Thomas organised the sessions well and provided handouts and exercises to do where relevant, and gave as much independent help as possible given the short time frame in which we had to learn. Of course, there was a lot of independent work involved, and for revision purposes we chose to create a shared google document in which we all cooperated to gather notes. In addition to learning astrophysics and cosmology theory we made our own observations as part of the coursework; one aided observation with the help of modern equipment, and one unaided observation with the naked eye. For my unaided observation I chose to observe the constellations Orion and