Scientific Enquiry at Alpington Primary School. 

Science Day. 

Our science day stated with a story.  “Hansel and Gretal” by Bethan Woollvin. In this modern retelling Hansel and Gretal do not make good choices and blow up the Good witches Gingerbread house!   

This morning we set the children the challenge of investigating…. 

Which type of biscuit would be best to rebuild the good witches house? 

All the classes had a whole day of planning, predicting, investigating to answer the question. Across the school the children enjoyed thinking about the qualities a biscuit needed to have be a good building material. Then they thought of ways to investigate and test their predictions.  

We have tested and observed in a whole range of different ways.  We have sorted by shape, colour, size and tessellation and dropped from different heights to test strength.  Eagles tested fire and wind resistance using a lighter and Mrs Petch’s hair dryer!  We conducted dunk tests for water resistance and used syringes to measure how much water a biscuit could hold before it collapsed.  Kingfishers class put their problem solving skills to the test and actually had a go at some biscuit based construction! 

Classes produced graphs, charts, tables, had in depth discussions and made careful observations. Owls and Eagles have repeated experiments for the most reliable results and calculated mean averages.   

The progression of science and mathematical skills across the whole school was fantastic to see.  Well done all.  I’m sure Willow the Good Witch will be happy with the results!