Science
News
Residential for Year 9 students
We are aiming to enthuse budding
environmental scientists to learn the science of
monitoring the environment around them. The
Science and Geography departments are
planning to take between 40-60 Year 9 GCSE
students to the Field Study Council residential
centre at Bets-y-Coed, Snowdonia National
Park. They will learn methods to survey river
and terrestrial habitats, to analyse water and
air quality, and to use biological indicator
species to identify pollutants. Many of these
science field study skills are also compatible
with the new GCSE Geography course. This is
an extremely oversubscribed residential in a
beautiful National Park, providing a unique
opportunity for our GCSE students to have first
hand experience on required GCSE practical
skills.
Mr
Goldthorp
says
"There is no substitute
for first hand field study
experience. For me the best part of science is
learning to apply it to study and protect our
natural environments. The field studies course
I did in secondary school enthused me to take
an Ecology degree and to go onto monitoring
sea turtle nesting activity for 3 years for WWF
before I went into teaching. This really is an
amazing opportunity."
Watch this space for more details.
Laboratory Naming Competition
On 17 th April the Science Team at AVS
decided it would be a great idea to have our
7 science laboratories named after British
Scientists.
In total we had 52 excellent entries, that looked
at a total of 17 British scientists. Thank you and
well done everybody that entered.
Most of us in the science team remember our
old school laboratories having names. Rather
than choose our own favourite scientists we
decided to launch a competition open to all
year groups, for them to find a British scientist
they felt was worthy enough to have a lab
permanently named after them.
The students were required to research their
chosen scientist’s lifeworks, and to justify why
that scientist, as opposed to other scientists
should be considered for having a school
laboratory dedicated to them. The wider aim
was to enrich student’s knowledge of British
scientists, to give students some ownership of
their science labs and hopefully for students to
discover British scientists whether alive or
deceased, from all genders, ethnicities and
religions.
Four of the scientists nominated by our students