Longacre Science Week 2022 had a medicine theme and was full of many interesting talks and activities for the children. We started with the Year 6 Science Masters giving an assembly about the history of medicines and how important it is for scientists to try new things and make mistakes so that they can learn. They finished off the assembly with a few experiments and even managed to make a white light with a strip of magnesium and turn the flame of a candle green!
On Tuesday Year 5 and 6 were very lucky to have a talk from Charlotte Brown who works in clinical trials of medicines. She spoke to the children about the process each medicine has to go through before it can be safely given to patients.
On Thursday Year 5 and 6 started the morning with a psychology talk by child psychologist, Dr James Woollard. He showed us some amazing illusions to show us how everyone’s brain works differently. He also told us about the different parts of the brain and how he helps children with their thoughts.
Later on Thursday Year 4-6 were spoken to by Dr Louisa Woollard and her team from the ward at the Royal Surrey Hospital. They showed us how they practice on a SIM man (a robot called Alan). It was amazing to see what the robot could do and we were so lucky that they spent the time to show us the heart rate monitors, defibrillator and how they would give a patient CPR.
On Thursday afternoon the children learnt some basic First Aid in their forms. They either learnt how to put someone in the recovery position, some learnt about treating a broken bone and others spoke about how to treat a nose bleed. The children found it very interesting and enjoyed practicing the techniques.
Throughout the week we had multiple dissections of both hearts and eyes. The Year 5 and 6 children really enjoyed this and it was amazing to see how curious they were about the different body parts.
On Friday morning, Years 1 to 3 were given a talk by Dr Alex Greenwood about the life of a doctor. The children were very lucky and were allowed to pass around lots of ‘tools of the trade’ which are used by doctors. Dr Greenwood showed us how this equipment is used, she told us about what she does in her job and that she thinks it is the best job in the world!
Years 4 to 6 then had a talk about surgery from Dr Mahreen Pakzad which was extremely interesting. Balthazar had a starring role when Dr Pakzad tested his ‘urine sample’ (apple juice!) to see how much glucose it contained. She also showed us some videos of real surgeries of human bladders and some of these were actually done by robots.
On Friday afternoon, all of the children from Reception – Form VI were off timetable for their medical forage. They were given an illness that they needed to treat using a medicine which they would make out of the plants and trees we have at Longacre. We saw some amazing collaboration between the different age groups of children and all the groups managed to create their own medicine. They then created a label for their medicine to say what it does and made an advert to tell others about their medicine. A great way to end the week!
Becky Clarke
