Year 7/8 have launched into Scientific Investigations in preparation for this year’s Schools Science Fair. This is an exciting event that all year 7-13 students across South Canterbury can have opportunity to participate in through their school. There are great prizes up for grabs and lots of scope for students to show their talent in scientific thinking.

Over the last few weeks students have been learning about how to perform experiments, observe and record findings, understand the scientific process, and what a fair test is all about.

They have generated a question they would like to investigate and create a hypothesis and an experiment that will ‘test’ their idea. It will be a very busy 4 weeks until our Science Fair Expo in Week 5, and the regional competition in week 6.

We have been fortunate to have had several really interesting visitors to help promote scientific understanding and innovation. 

Julie McLean who organises the Science Fair for South Canterbury shared some previous work from her students and gave us some great advice about what makes a successful investigation

On the last day of term 2, Shane Hutton from Hutton’s Honey captivated the pod with everything to do with bees. Shane brought a hive and all the paraphernalia associated with this very important industry, and we learnt about how this insect is crucial to our survival as well as some of the issues bees face. Shane was fantastic in sharing his passion for bees, and immense knowledge, helping spark students imagination about some technology solutions to help this vulnerable part of our food cycle.

Debbie Eddington from ECAN also visited school last week to talk about issues in and around South Canterbury. Debbie outlined the technology section of the Science Fair competition which looks at solutions to help us live more sustainably. This is mainly to do with air, land, and water use, but also pest control.

Staff in the Think Tank are really looking forward to guiding students through their investigation work, and promote Scientific Thinking with our innovative students. Keep an eye out for the Expo date in week 5.

Kate Vaughan