This year the theme for science week is ‘growth’. This can be interpreted in many different ways from the growth of an animal or plant to the growth of the population on our planet! Here at Park Street we all took part in a variety of activities to celebrate this! Firstly, Year 1-6 all took part in the annual poster competition following the theme of 'growth'. Each class interpreted this in their own way and produced some amazing pieces! 
Alongside this, each class carried out an investigation in their teams following this years theme. 
If this wasn't enough, we also took part in 'smashing stereotypes'. This allowed the children to be introduced to a variety of careers in science and given the opportunity to learn about some amazing men and women who have contributed to this field. 

This certainly created a buzz for jobs in this field and left many of our children feeling aspirational! 

​During this session, the class discussed how sometimes our growing bodies use rules and guesses when they look at or experience something. To test this, the children were shown the Jastrow illusion and asked which arch was bigger. Unanimously, the children all believed that B was bigger. To test this children cut out each arch, swapped their position and laid them on top of each other, eventually concluding that they were both the same size after measuring with a ruler. We then investigated the Ebbinghaus illusion. Again, children all thought that the largest orange circle was in the smaller flower. To prove that they were in fact both the same, we cut them out. Extending from this activity, children created their own illusion using two 10cm lines. We discussed why one line appeared longer than the other despite knowing that they were the same length. As a class we explored how our brain can sometimes work so quickly that it seeks to make links that are not actually a true reflection of the experience at hand.

This half terms focus enquiry is observation over time. In Team JF we decided to observe changes to cress plants and what the best condition for them to grow in could be. We each planted our own cress plant, using seeds, cotton wool and a plant pot. Next, each table was given a condition to grow their plant in: blue table had no light, green table were inside, pink table had no water and yellow table were outside. After one week we had a look at our cress plants and found out that yellow tables cress plants grew the best.