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This activity was to take place at Bath Taps into Science [3], and we were set the task of hosting an interactive stall for a primary school aged-audience. We were informed that we would have two noticeboards, a table and access to electricity. Otherwise we had complete free rein, and it was up to us to decide how we would best communicate Vicky's Research. We had recently completed two reports on the topic [A] so we knew it well; we now had to consider how we would adapt it for our new audience: primary school children. Before we planned anything specific, we decided on three main Aims for activity 2.
Aim 1 was essential, as this was the aim that would link back to Vicky’s research, albeit rather loosely. Aims 2 & 3 were more about the children enjoying our stall, as studies suggest enjoying scientific activities at a young age impacts both academic performance and whether that child sees Science as an appropriate field in the future [4] [5].
With these aims in mind we began brainstorming ideas for the activity, however, this proved to be more difficult than we initially thought. There was a key obstacle which we had to overcome: Vicky’s research was quite complicated, and communicating it to primary school children would be challenging. If our stall was too complex, there was a good chance students wouldn’t come to it at all. We decided that we could tackle this problem by splitting the activities at our stall into two parts. First, we would have a fun activity on 'the size of space' which would be entertaining and educational for students of all ages and attention spans. We would have some secondary activities which would contain more detail. The idea would be that the first activities would draw students in, and hopefully many students would stay on for the secondary activities.
Initial Ideas Brainstorm for Activity 2
Initial concept of the "Space station 1"
The final plan was for the stall to be composed of two main 'Space-Stations'.
Space-Station 1 involved a large piece of black cardboard with a picture of Earth on. The principle was that students would guess the distance to the Sun by placing a cut-out paper star on the board. This activity would be fun, straightforward and visually engaging- which would hopefully encourage students to come over and make them curious about the rest of the stall.
Space-Station 2 was a 'guess the distance' quiz- where the students would have to match up named distances shown on the board (e.g the distance to Saturn), to their respective numerical values (1.2 billion km). This would further educate them about distances outside our solar system. Both Space-Stations would be completed using a scorecard [B]; this would encourage healthy competition which has been shown to motivate students [6].
The stall would also include an Interactive Poster [B]. This would contain further information for the more curious students, presented in a fun and interactive way (flaps, fun facts etc). The poster would allow us to communicate Vicky’s work in more detail to interested students, without discouraging those who weren’t interested in the finer points. With the plan complete, we decided on Four SMART Objectives which would allow us to achieve our aims.
Pitching our idea to our peers, we received mostly positive feedback [C]. However, there was one main criticism: that we were taking on too much with three individual sections to our stall. We decided to mostly ignore this critique, as we were confident in our abilities to manage all 3 sections (space station 1 & 2 + poster). The planning stage was now complete, and we felt confident with our idea. Now all that was left to do was make and host our stall.
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