The Enquiry Zone was supported by Wellcome and was for Year 6 students to work with scientists to develop a citizen science project. The scientists involved each suggested a research idea which they refined with the students in the live chats and ASK section, and students then voted for the project they most wanted to carry out at their school.
Sakshi wanted to work with students to find out how boys and girls are different from each other, Martin’s experiment idea was to measure the breath of students and see if that could tell us how students feel during the day and Luke wanted to find out what students think about regenerative medicine and stem cells. Jennifer, the winner of this zone, proposed a project that would look at how much primary school students knew about their own bodies and Dan wanted to find out whether students were able to pace themselves during physical activity.
This was the second Enquiry Zone we have run, and this time we changed the scientists’ profile questions so they could focus on the aims and method of their experiment ideas. As with the Enquiry Zone we ran last March, the best chats were those where students had been briefed by their teacher beforehand and had had a chance to discuss the scientists’ experiment ideas before meeting them.
As the event went on, all of the scientists improved how they spoke to students within the live chats and learnt to prompt the students with questions about their projects to engage them in conversation.
