Robert Kett Junior School Visit

The Earlham Institute (EI) visited the Robert Kett Junior School in Wymondham to enthuse and engage students and teachers with the Institute’s innovative research. The event focused on the genome analysis of microbes, keeping in line with the school’s current biology curriculum.

The primary school visit to Robert Kett included five workshops with all the Year 6 pupils. The day of science activities began with five different ‘microbe islands’ mapped out for the pupils to visit, each one representing different types of microbes that are analysed at EI.

With their EI ‘passports’, the students travelled to each microbe island completing a variety of interactive activities, rewarded with passport stickers from EI’s specialist scientists along the way. To wrap up the day, the student who made the most progress on the day was awarded a giant E-coli toy.

As feedback, students were given the task of remembering keywords from the different microbe islands to send a text message back to EI on what they had learnt, as well as postcards to fill in to express their views on the event.

Lead teacher of the visit at Robert Kett, Trevor Child, said: “The kids had a thoroughly exciting time, they were fully engaged when learning about the good and bad features of microbes sequenced at EI. It was lovely to see such a variety of activities that were bright and colourful with lots of fascinating facts, which complemented the microbes topic that the pupils have been working on, while linking directly to the National Curriculum”.