180 pupils from six Cambridgeshire primary schools visited science departments at the University over three days last week to gain an insight into cells, DNA and genes.
180 pupils from six Cambridgeshire primary schools visited science departments at the University over three days last week to gain an insight into cells, DNA and genes.
The visits were organised by Professor Andrea Brand, winner of the Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society in 2006. Professor Brand is Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology at the Wellcome Trust / Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute and Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Funding from the Rosalind Franklin Award made the visits possible.
In fulfilment of her Rosalind Franklin Award, Professor Brand aimed to raise the profile of women in developmental biology by involving numerous prominent female researchers from the Gurdon Institute to give short talks with cartoons and animations showing the inner life of cells to pupils. Afterwards, pupils went to the Elementary Laboratory at the Department of Zoology, where they extracted their own DNA from cheek cells and bottled it, and looked at their cheek cells under the microscope. PhD students and post-doctoral researchers from Professor Brand's group were on hand to help pupils with the practical experiments.
‘It's hard to believe that there are 100 trillion cells in your body,' said James, a year 5 pupil from Leverington Primary School, near Wisbech.
‘We've been really impressed with the hands-on activities for pupils today, which helped them learn about cells and DNA and the presentation was also accurately aimed at this age range,' said Linda Alcock, a teacher at Leverington Primary School.
After a visit to the Zoology Museum, where the ‘Bare Bones' quiz trail proved very popular, pupils created their own websites to record their day at the University. The pupils' websites can be seen at http://summersciencedays.buzzwebz.com .
The schools that took part were Babraham Primary School, Fowlmere Primary School (Royston), Kings Hedges Primary School (Cambridge), Leverington Primary School (Wisbech), Millfield Primary School (Littleport), and St Luke's Primary School (Cambridge).
These primary science days were organised by Professor Brand in conjunction with the University's Festivals and Outreach office.
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