Animal Care
On Wednesday, the Year 9 and 10 Animal Care students received a visit from some hens and chicks so that they could complete the bird handling component of their coursework, organised by Miss Booth. Claire, from hens for hire, also spoke to our students about the history of chickens in the UK, chicken anatomy and how to properly hold the birds, skilfully demonstrated below. There was some trepidation among the students at first, but by the end of the session every single student had properly handled the chickens, even if it was only a baby one!
Astronomy
We are proud to announce that Sharples School has been certified with the Space Education Quality Mark – Silver Award by STEM Learning for demonstrating excellence in using Space Education to inspire students to be passionate about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
This marks the second step on our way to becoming one of the top secondary providers of Space Education in the region, being one of the only schools or colleges with a university grade observatory facility, as well as offering the rare GCSE Astronomy course as part of our challenge curriculum. Our Space related programmes are rapidly expanding, and we are ambitiously aiming to be awarded Gold over the next few years.
Students at Sharples are able to access Space Education across all year groups, from Year 7 Astronomy Club to selecting GCSE Astronomy as one of their options.
Further Space related enrichment events throughout the year ensure that students are aware of the opportunities that exist to them in one of the UK’s fastest growing industrial sectors, including talks from working Astronomers and Astronauts.
For example, on Thursday, we hosted the Inflativerse team from Nottingham University with their mobile planetarium in the Theatre all day. 100 Science students across all year groups were able to enjoy a guided tour of the night sky and constellations in the dark dome, use real deep space survey images of galaxies in order to devise their own scientific classification system to split them into similar groups, as well as hearing from PhD students talk about their own areas of research and career paths that our GCSE Astronomy students are aiming to follow in the future!
Thanks go to all the staff at Sharples who have worked hard towards this award and provided our students with high quality enrichment opportunities.
Mr J. Harding – Science Enrichment Coordinator, Space Education Lead
