GSS 2022

Celebrating science

This year’s theme is ‘Change Makers: All Together Fairer’

Our sixth annual Science Symposium took place on 7th March with the theme ‘Change Makers: All Together Fairer’ and was an exciting event for everyone involved.

Science Leads planned and delivered a vast range of activities and experiences for pupils, working with external speakers and visitors, as well as all of Year 6 and Year 7 joining the live sessions led by the Open University Science Outreach Team.

The focus for the live sessions was the Moon and the pre-learning in schools meant that pupils were able to engage with the science at a sophisticated level, as evidenced by the questioning.

Inspiring Change

This Proud Tradition linked to British Science Week and was launched by our inspiring keynote guest speaker, Dr Anne Edwards. Dr Edwards works in Professor Cathie Martin’s lab at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. Her specialism is the grass pea, one of the oldest crops and she gave a fascinating and informative talk on her research and developments in this specialist field of science.

We also welcomed a panel of scientists to join us – Dr Angaraj Duara (NASA researcher), Mr Allen Tsui, (STEM and Robotics Lead) and Zhouqion Jiang (a PhD student studying plant genetics at the John Innes Centre).

There were many highlights of the day, including being given the opportunity to include the Griffin Schools Trust name on a special chip, as part of the next Mars launch (2026), meeting Marty the Robot and learning so much from the scientists themselves in this limitless world of scientific possibilities.

Over the next few weeks, schools are planning a wealth of scientific activities for their students to be actively involved in. Trust-wide events will include live sessions from the Open University with the theme of Lunar Research and the launch of the GST competition, offering an open and creative opportunity within our theme of Change Makers: All Together Fairer.