Pupils from Abbot Alphege Academy in Bath have enjoyed an evening of stargazing with the team from Bath Astronomers. The activity was organised by Year 6 teacher Mrs Helen Sharma who invited Bath Astronomers to the school as part of the Year 5 and 6 studies around the topic ‘Where is space?’.
The children and their parents were treated to an evening’s astronomy using a variety of telescopes supplied by Bath Astronomers, as well as having the chance to build their own planisphere to help them chart the position of the stars in the night sky.
“As our current topic is ‘Where is Space?’, I thought it would be a great idea to arrange a stargazing evening at school,” explained Mrs Sharma. “We are so grateful to the Bath Astronomers who gave up their time to come and show our children the night sky through their telescopes. As you can see, the children have had a wonderful time.
“It is so important to get the children interested and excited about the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects and hopefully they will be inspired to go on and study science subjects.”
“We think it is so important for children to have real, first hand experiences to make their learning memorable and to get them really excited for the themes they are learning about,” added Head Teacher, Vicy Dupras. “It was a real pleasure to welcome the children’s parents and carers to join them on this fantastic evening, as we see learning as a real partnership between home and school.”
Simon Holbeche from Bath Astronomers, commented, “The team at Bath Astronomers has visited dozens of primary and secondary schools and young peoples’ organisations over the last five years offering stargazing experiences and classroom lessons to inspire young minds using space to make science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics more accessible.”
“Seeing the rings around Saturn, the craters on Moon or the storms on Jupiter, launching eggs on paper rocks or remotely controlling a telescope on a mountain in Hawaii are exciting and memorable experiences we can hook learning to and introduce teachers to even more great resources to use from the UK Space Education Office. Children leave our sessions smiling and chatty, with a spark that our hosts tells us about weeks after. We hope that the spark may grow and lead some to a future STEAM career.“