BlogS

Moving from Covid-Volunteer to Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT)...

At the beginning of Lockdown some of us volunteered our time to our professional practice schools to help support them in this changing world, whether it be as an extra body or to supply and create resources where possible. With one of The Everyday Scientist Programme team returning to their part-time job in a local care home, supporting other staff members, residents and family members - through virtual means. Volunteering in schools has helped us see a different and unique side to education, where we focused more on pastoral education then academic teaching for the children in school.

As the school year draws to a close here at The Everyday Scientist Programme we have started to look to the future of our personal careers. With many of our team securing teaching posts both here in the UK and aboard. These appointments have given us hope for the future of the next generation and the Programme. We still foresee and worry that Science and the foundation subjects will be pushed aside to allow English and Maths catch-up, but as we enter the classroom ourselves we hope to plan a broad and balanced curriculum for our classes as well as implementing The Everyday Scientist Programme within our lessons and after-school clubs in a safe, caring and educationally-stimulating environment.

COVID-19 and it's impact...

Having our practices cut short and with no real time to say goodbye to the children we worked with, it is difficult to see how COVID has changed all of our lives over the past few months. Many of us have moved back home and left our university lives prematurely and many of our graduation plans have been cancelled. In terms of the programme, we had planned to go into schools and work closely to develop the programme further. Obviously with the current restrictions, we don't think this is something we are going to be able to safely do for a while.

COVID has taken a toll on all of our lives in some way and here at The Everyday Scientist Programme we are no different. We have been offering free science at home resources to download to help keep children interested and engaged by science, however, many of us are worried that Science and the foundation subjects are going to be pushed aside in favour of catching up with the missed English and Maths. I guess it is just something we are going to have to wait and see what happens.

From everyone here at the programme, keep safe and we shall see you soon.

Professional Practice to School Closures...

We were all allocated amazing professional practices, by february, that have all enabled us to develop as teachers, as well as develop this programme within a school setting. However, given the world we are all currently living in, all schools have been closed, resulting in our professional practices offically coming to an end. We have all volunteered our services to our professional practice schools to ensure that they have all the support that they need in this unknown time. This has also meant that our time at uni has ended, in a way none of us have ever imagined. With some of us having professional practice based near home rather than near uni, it has felt like years since we were last there. However, it is nice to be able to spend time with our families and our animals, my cats won't stop sleeping and are getting freaked out by hair bobbles, it is hilarious to watch.

Our normal focus for the programme has taken a back seat, origninally so we could focus on our professional practice and trying to implement what we had already developed within schools. However, given the current situation we have changed our focus silghtly to help parents continue their child's science education with some home learning activities for anyone and everyone to complete at home or in school for key worker children.

Keep in touch and stay safe, feel free to ask any questions about the home learning activities. Make sure to be following all of our socials to keep up to date with everything we are doing!

Back from the break...

After a very relaxing Christmas break the team are back and ready to begin making 2020 the year of the Everyday Scientist! We have lots of big things in the pipeline this year and we are very much looking forward to getting them moving forward.

With us being third-years at university, January has been a very difficult time for us due to the volume of work we have due. We have managed time between the programme and our academic studies as best as we can and although the programme has suffered slightly attention-wise, we are all still very much committed to developing this programme into something usable within schools.

Most of us from the team have been allocated our professional practices this week and we are all very eager to take this programme into schools and dive back into our last year of teacher training with Edge Hill. Whilst this is a very exciting time, it is also kind-of bitter-sweet. The main bulk of uni work is now complete and we only have a few things left to do after placement which means that our uni careers is pretty much complete. Whilst we are all looking forward to the future, it is a very sad moment realising that we only have a few more months together. It is true what they say - your three years at uni really do fly by!

Keep in touch and make sure to be following all of our socials to keep up to date with everything we are doing!

Taking the first steps...

December has been very busy for us, we have been working on the project what seems to be non-stop since the presentation. We have officially got our socials up and running and we had a very successful Tricky Topic Tuesday last week: we saw lots of great comments and interactions which got people thinking about how and if we should be teaching climate change in our primary schools.

We also had our meeting with the Careers team at Edge Hill, who have given us some really great tips on how to begin taking this forward. They also guided us through the application process for the student opportunity fund and given us plenty of things to think about before applying.

We look forward to next week which will see our final Tricky Topic Tuesday of the year. So be sure to check in!

It all started with a group presentation...

Being at Edge Hill studying Primary Education is a dream come true for me and majoring in Science tops it off nicely. I have always had an interest in science specifically as it lends its self very nicely to technology as well. When we found out we would be doing an assessed group presentation, we all felt very nervous, but as soon as we found out we headed to the library to begin working on it. Here we developed a few ideas and had a little bit of a brain storming session. We developed this idea around Heswall Primary School's Science Improvement Plan and decided to focus on target six, which happened to be Science Capital.

Eventually we came up with this idea of having visitors come into school to discuss with the children what exactly makes them a scientist. Jokingly, I suggested the everyday scientist. We all laughed at first but then after a moment we all sat back and decided that the name was perfect!

From here the presentation and ideas grew and grew into what we have today. Our presentation went really well, and our discussion with the tutors and the Deputy Head from Heswall really inspired us to take this idea further. Having realised that this was too good of an opportunity to let go, we jumped in with both feet and began to develop the profile of the everyday scientist.

That same night we went home and began to create socials for the programme. We started off slow, with only people we knew following the page, but soon enough after we began creating content, our follower count reached one hundred! We knew this was something special so we continued producing content and creating a really engaging account for people to be following. We are currently waiting to meet with the science team at university, as well as meet with the university careers department regarding the Student Opportunity Fund.

Be sure to follow us on our socials to keep up to date with all the new updates!