Inspiring young minds at St Albert's Primary with 4wardFutures

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Two students talking to school children in a class room.
LIV.INNO students Lauryn Eley and Katie Ferraby leading discussions into the fundamental forces at an outreach workshop.

LIV.INNO students Lauryn Eley and Katie Ferraby led an outreach workshop at St Albert's Catholic Primary School earlier this week in partnership with local charity 4wardFutures.

4wardFutures is a careers education charity that aims to raise the scientific capital of young people and ensure that they have a knowledge of the multitude of careers open to them.

The outreach sessions allow local pupils to meet real people conducting exciting research, with the intention of counteracting the stereotypical representation of scientists in media and presenting the different career pathways into STEM. Their current project, ‘What Things Are Made Of?’ (WATMO) is funded by STFC and the Ogden Trust.

As part of the WATMO project, Lauryn and Katie led a discussion into the fundamental forces of the Universe with a Year 5 class at St. Alberts Catholic School in Knowsley. The workshop focused on creating understanding of the role these forces play in making up all matter, beginning and the level of atoms and chemical elements, and expanding all the way up to planets and stars. This created opportunity for a large breadth of discussion during the session, covering topics such as exoplanets, black holes and planetary evolutions - often driven by the pupils themselves!

The key activity presented as part of this discussion allowed the students to model stellar evolution using ping-pong balls as elements and think about how lighter elements fuse into heavier ones. The heavier elements were then used to form planets, allowing the pupils to understand the key role of gravity and nuclear fusion in the development of the Universe and chemical elements we rely on for life.

At the end of the session, the pupils had the opportunity to create art based on the topics covered to help consolidate their learning. Following a discussion of ‘different types of light’ aided by UV pens and an IR camera, the children were able to start their artwork. When completed, the art created will be displayed in a virtual classroom alongside similar creations from other schools in Merseyside which can be found on the 4wardFutures website: https://4fvirtual.org.uk/watmo/.

If you are interested in taking part in engaging with young people, showcasing your research and explaining routes into your sector, please get in touch with mark@4wardfutures.org.uk.