"Healthy Start" for Primary Science Week

It’s Primary Science Week (07-11 May) and The University of Auckland’s Liggins Institute is supporting the NZ Association of Science Educator’s national event by opening its doors to school students aged 9-12 years.

The Institute’s LENScience programme has been established to build connections between schools and the science community. While most of the programme’s activities involve secondary school students, the LENScience team has also developed and trialled the Healthy Start to Life programme specifically for intermediate school students.

“The programme helps students to develop an understanding of how their bodies work and why it is important to cultivate healthy lifestyles from an early age,” says LENScience Director Jacquie Bay. “It also introduces them to the nature and processes of science which will support them in making decisions about their health and other scientific issues later in life.”

Classes from Pukeoware School in Waiuku, Glen Eden Intermediate and Henderson North Primary School will participate in this week’s programme.

Henderson North teacher Deborah Gill is already familiar with the Liggins Institute and the work of LENScience. Last year she spent five months at the Institute, as part of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s (RSNZ) Fellowship programme for primary school teachers, developing ideas that she could apply in her classroom.

To support her efforts to bring science to life in her school, the LENScience team have worked with Deb and specially adapted the Healthy Start to Life programme for her Year 5-6 students.

Glen Eden Intermediate is one of LENScience’s stakeholder schools that helped develop the Healthy Start to Life programme for Year 7-9 students in 2009 and has been part of a two year development and trial before the programme was made available to all schools. The full module will be available online later this year.

This week’s programmes in the LENScience-Logan Campbell Classroom include activities where students measure the electrical activity of their hearts, the effect of exercise on their heart rate and learn more about the relationship between food, exercise and health - factors that influence health and well-being. Students will also spend time talking to scientists – learning about some of their research and how they go about their work.

“Children's instinctive fascination with the world around them makes science a wonderful vehicle for supporting literacy and numeracy development in primary schools,” says Ms Bay.

“The Liggins Institute recognises that working together, science teachers and scientists can create exciting learning opportunities, capture the interest of children and support the development of scientific literacy needed in the next generation.”