Inspiring the Next Generation - Crookfur Primary School

The team at Moredun are embarking on a new education project, where the BioBus will be taken to primary schools all around Scotland over the next year.

The workshops we offer have been designed in conjunction with our scientists to ensure all information is up to date, accurate and relevant to real life. Each activity is an excellent addition to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, hitting outcomes such as "Body Systems and Cells", "Biodiversity and Interdependence", "Health and Wellbeing" and "Social Studies: People, Place and Environment".

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence aims to produce well-rounded members of society

Our first visit was to Crookfur Primary School in Newton Mearns, near Glasgow, where Lee Innes and Amy Tyndall carried out our "Disease Detectives" workshop with 72 P5 pupils (though thankfully not all at once!)

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The BioBus parked up outside Eastwood High School

Thanks to a good weather forecast, we were able to host part of the workshop inside the BioBus and the other part outside set up on trestle tables. The P5s were split up into groups of 12 throughout the day. An introduction to parasites, bacteria and viruses were given to the group to start with, with our bag of "fluffy bugs" turning out to be very popular!

The group was then split up into two groups of 6, with half venturing onboard the BioBus to get up close and personal with parasites and learn how vaccines are made.

Lee introduces the pupils to our parasite collection

Up, close and personal!

Doing a vaccine 'jigsaw'.

Meanwhile, the other group of 6 remained outside with Amy, where she took them through the process of how a vet or scientist might test and diagnose a sick sheep. Using petri dishes filled with strawberry jelly, each pupil took a vial of 'sheep snot' (glow-in-the-dark liquid!), dipped in a swab and then drew a pattern on the jelly to represent growing a colony of bacteria. The petri dishes were then placed in a special 'incubator' (a dark box with a black light) to see if it glows. If it did, then the sheep were deemed to be sick with a bacterial infection and in need of treatment.

Learning how to apply the sheep snot to the agar plate.

Copying the pattern in order to grow a bacteria colony.

The final product!

All of the children were an absolute delight to work with - very engaged, curious and excited, a credit to their school. We overheard some brilliant comments during the day, such as "This is the coolest thing ever", "I wish I could do this every day!", and "I know I'm only in primary school, but if I want to do this for a job later who do I call?" - definitely some future scientists in the making! 

After the event, the feedback we got from the rest of the pupils, plus our contact teacher, Claire Lamont, was very uplifting! Some of the feedback is shared below:

• [The children] thought Lee and Amy were fantastic and they loved talking to real scientists about their jobs. They said they were very patient at answering all of their questions and that they explained things really well. 
  
• Everyone thought the visit was amazing and they thoroughly enjoyed it. 
  
• Favourite parts of the day were:

• Everything!
• Testing – using the incubator and testing to see if bacteria was growing
• Looking at all the parasites
• Using the feely bag to learn about different viruses and parasites
• Looking at the live egg under the microscope 
• Creating the vaccines by solving the jigsaws
  
  
• There was nothing that they didn't enjoy... Though they said that next time it would be fun to work with poo!!
  
• Single words used to describe the visit:

• Excited, Amazed, Awesome, Inspired, Nervous, Puzzled, Happy, Brilliant, Curious, Astonoshing, Knowledgeable, Fantastic.

Thank you to Crookfur Primary and Claire for allowing us to have our first visit at your school!