Lesson Four

Today was the last day of the stepping inside the cell project. Its a chance for me to tell the children a bit more about my own research.

I showed them some time-lapse movies of wound healing experiments, the famous movie of the white blood cell chasing a bacteria (worth a look www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ) and another one from my lab of isolated neurons making connections over time.

The children always enjoy watching these and there were plenty of encore cries....

Having talked about my own work we turned to considering how scientists communicate their work to other scientists and the general public. We brainstormed how we communicate and came up with lots of suggestions (many focussed on social media). This discussion was then directed by me towards making posters. I showed the children some posters that my lab has taken to meetings and then told them they were making their own posters.

In the ICT room the children typed up their experiments and then put together posters with printed microscope images that they had taken of pond weed, onion skin or cheek cells.

They produced some really good work , I was very pleased with the posters at the end of the lesson.

I'm hoping we will be able to display a selection in school. See two great examples below

That's the end of Stepping Inside The Cell for 2016 - I'll finish with a quote from one of the year 5 children "this has been great .....I look forward to science now".