Children Challenging Industry visit to LOTTE Chemicals

Jenny Harvey (left) with children from St Bernadette's and some of the Lotte team

 

LOTTE Chemicals had not hosted a visit for Children Challenging Industry for quite some time. We began with an initial meeting to update Jackie Petford and the team on what it entails. Joanne Route, who was the Industry Liaison Officer and Tony Johnson, who hosts regular visits at Huntsman (also on the Wilton site) were present, along with me and two members of the LOTTE team. Initially hesitant due to the time lapse since the last visit, the ideas and plans came rapidly into fruition. Jackie remembered hosting previous visits and the other members of her team became more and more enthused about the whole idea. A firm plan was put in place and the visit date was booked.

 After providing and paying for the coach, for which St Bernadette’s RC Primary School were eternally grateful, the LOTTE team sprang into action with a brief introduction from the CEO, a Health and Safety talk and a quick tour of the site. Hard hats, lab coats and specs were provided by the CCI team. The children got to see the control room in action and a series of exciting experiments in each of the real laboratories. One child commented that ‘It was great to see what really goes on in one of those labs, instead of what you see on the telly!’ The morning finished with a set of photographs being taken of the group and a healthy drink and snack being given by the LOTTE team. The children were buzzing with conversations about what they had seen and learned from the visit all the way back to school. Several children said that they had not expected it to be as interesting as it was and they were more likely to study science subjects in future. A great success all round!

 

 Jenny Harvey, CIEC Advisory Teacher for the North East

 





CCI visit to Perry Process Equipment is a huge success!

The CCI visit to Perry Process Equipment in Newton Aycliffe last week was fantastic! Everything they did with the children backed up the 'Water for Industry' project. The demonstrators were very in tune with child speak and several of the children asked really scientific questions (lots of potential, budding scientists there!)

They were shown a variety of equipment including a variety of gaskets and the real difference they make to industrial sized pipes, a centrifuge and a batch blender. The children did some 'hands on' tasks and the equipment was demonstrated to them.

Overall another huge success for the CCI project!

Looking forward to the next one!

Jenny Harvey, Advisory Teacher for the North East

Children Challenging Industry visits to Chemoxy International in Middlesbrough

Two Children Challenging Industry visits at the Chemoxy International Middlesbrough Site by children of Breckon Hill Primary School have been declared a resounding success!

The teachers and children were extremely complimentary, and expressed several times how much they enjoyed it. The school was very grateful of Chemoxy’s kind hospitality and the time site personnel took to describe what they did and to show them around the site.

The first group’s visit explored the theme of 'Heating and cooling', which naturally tied in well with the children’s 'Water for Industry' CCI project at school. The tour guides, demonstration presenters, fork lift truck demonstration, water curtain demonstration, the balloon experiment in the R&D lab went down particularly well (no pun intended!) and showed how water can be used for cooling.

The second group’s visit explored the theme of ‘Mixing’, with close links to their CCI ‘Kitchen Concoctions’ science project at school. The short interactive presentations and activities showed the children how we use recipes and equipment such as agitators, tanks, drums and how we mix and use chemicals on site. There was plenty of time for questions and answers about careers@chemoxy too.

Both groups finished their mornings with a quiz about what they had seen as they walked around the site. Prizes for the quiz (books on children’s science experiments, encyclopaedias and dictionaries) were issued to several lucky winners. Finally, together with some unusual goodie bags that can be used for making compost, each child was issued with a certificate to commemorate their visit to Chemoxy. The presentations and pictures taken have been sent to school for use at their assembly.

Chocolate Volcano at the Royal Academy of Engineering Summer Soiree!

This year’s RAEng Summer Soiree is being held at The University of York.

CIEC Promoting Science have been asked to display at the event on Thursday 27^th June during the early evening.

They will be showcasing the new resource for 9-12 year olds ‘Is There anyone Out There?’ and showing the chocolate volcano that features in one of the activities.

See the free downloadable resource ‘Is There anyone Out There?’ here http://www.cciproject.org/topicBank/space.htm

Innovative Science

Joy Parvin and Joelle Halliday of CIEC Promoting Science are leading the Innovative Science course at the National Science Learning Centre from the 18th-20th June.

Free Science CPD for Primary Teachers

Tomorrow I will be working with teachers close to Croda's site in Cowick Hall, near Goole. We will take a look at our latest resource for primary teachers, available to all on the CIEC website.

This resource, Science of Healthy Skin, is based upon processes used in industry to research, develop and produce ingredients with a wide variety of applications such as home care, personal products and health care. Children work as scientists through exciting activities organised into three themes:

• the extraction of lanolin from wool grease,
• the development of a bubble bath recipe,

·         changing the form of an ingredient to make it suitable for use in sunscreens and testing the effectiveness of sunscreen products

 The website http://www.ciec.org/healthyskin/ is used to introduce each storyline and the children interact with the web pages throughout their investigations. The website has been specially designed to teach 9-11 year olds about a range of products to clean and protect the skin. Through online and classroom activities, children have the opportunity to develop and implement creative ideas and innovative solutions to scientific and industrial problems, based on what happens in real companies.

If you are interested in these activities, and you live in the Yorkshire region, I will be carrying out a similar session on 17 April, and further details can be found here.

Joelle Halliday joins the CIEC Promoting Science team

Joelle Halliday has joined CIEC team as a Primary Professional Development Leader. Joelle’s career has included teaching in primary schools in the North West followed by several years as an LEA advisory teacher with a special interest in science.

Joelle will be delivering primary courses at NSLC and developing new CIEC resources. She delivered her first course at NSLC last week entitled Enriching the Primary Curriculum using Space and Astronomy. The CIEC resource Is There Anyone Out There? formed the basis for the activities.

Joelle said the course went well with the teachers particularly enjoying the practical sessions, which included making a chocolate volcano!

OUTSTANDING achievers in Teesside’s process sector have been honoured at a major awards ceremony. Around 450 people attended the event, organised by NEPIC (North East Process Industry Cluster) and sponsored by leading names in the sector.

Subhash Chaudhary, from Fujifilm Diosynth in Billingham, walked away with the prestigious Outstanding Contribution award and we are delighted to announce that he is donating the full £2,000 prize money to the Children Challenging Industry Project here on Teesside.

 Photo: left to right –Doug Annan (Senior Vice President at Sembcorp), Subhash Chaudhary (Fujifilm Diosynth), Nicky Waller, Stan Higgins (CEO at Nepic)

CIEC activities at ASE 2013

Measuring how far a toy car has run in the Making Maths and Science Meaningful practical workshop



Once again teachers at CIEC talks were keen to get involved in the hands-on activities being shared by Gayle Pook and Michele Smale.

Practical activities during the session How schools are using ambassadors to support KS3 Practical Science

Have you seen Stargazing?

Have you seen  BBC’s Stargazing Live?  

On Tuesday  much of the programme was devoted to the Curiosity Rover exploring Mars. Those primary school teachers watching can use the resource - Is there anyone out there?, developed by CIEC Promoting Science in collaboration with ESERO-UK - in the classroom to help their pupils to emulate space exploration and if they want further help delivering the resource attend the NSLC CPD course - Enriching the primary curriculum using space and astronomy - which takes place on February 11 and 12^th at York.

The resource contains many scientific enquiry activities for primary pupils. The course comes with an Enthuse bursary of £744 and so after paying for the course fee and expenses schools should have money left to be able to buy curriculum materials to support science teaching in the primary classroom. 

In support of Brian Cox and Dara O Briain excellent contributions to Stargazing were from Lucie Green and Lewis Dartnell both having delivered inspirational talks at ESERO-UK teacher conferences in the past. We have been very impressed with the topical space and astronomy items many of which promote space as an inspirational context to enrich the teaching and learning of STEM subjects.

CIEC Promoting Science at ASE Annual Conference, 2013

Michele and Gayle on the CIEC stand

CIEC were represented at the annual ASE conference in Reading by Gayle Pook and Michele Smale – and this year there were none of the usual worries about ice and snow!

Gayle delivered a talk entitled ‘How schools are using ambassadors to support KS3 Practical Science’ and Michele hosted a practical session on ‘Making Maths and Science Meaningful’ which explored opportunities to enhance science and maths through the use of real life contexts.

As the conference fell in the school holidays this year there seemed to be more teachers than usual who were able to attend. Michele and Gayle met numerous primary teachers during the 3 day event and were able to introduce many of them to the CIEC ethos of teaching science through real life, industrial contexts. And of course they met up with many old friends!