Year 12 students take part in university-style science collaboration based on the theme ‘at the movies’

It was fantastic to be able to involve our entire new cohort of IB Diploma students in the IB Science Group Project so early in the year.

From the students’ perspective, it means they have already had the opportunity to work with students across the whole of Year 12 and at the same time completed one required element of their IB Diploma course.

The IB Sciences Group Project is an interdisciplinary and collaborative activity in which students from different Sciences Group subjects work together on a scientific or technological topic.

Students were placed in groups containing a mixture of those studying Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Design Technology, Computing Science and/or Environmental Systems and Society. They inevitably had the opportunity to meet some new faces and were challenged to employ the IB Learner Profile Attributes to demonstrate that they are thinkers, inquirers, communicators, risk takers, knowledgeable, principled, caring, open-minded, balanced and reflective.

The Project also addressed several of the IB Science Group Aims, including “developing and applying 21st century communication skills in the study of science”; “becoming critically aware, as global citizens, of the ethical implications of using science and technology” and “developing an understanding of the relationships between scientific disciplines”.

The theme this year was ‘At the Movies’ and allowed for concepts and perceptions from across the disciplines to be shared as each group developed the theme as they saw fit. While the two days set aside for the Project were very much about the process, not the product, each group of students produced a presentation before displaying this at the TGS IB Sciences Group Fayre.

Following this, students were required to reflect on their experiences, provide feedback and vote for their favourite presentation. The winning presentation was by group number 15 who managed to demonstrate and explain the use of holograms in the movies. In addition, the staff chose group 11 as their winner after they had developed an interactive display about cinematic senses!

Mr Kennedy, Subject Leader, Biology and IB Sciences Group Co-ordinator commented, “This is just one of many opportunities the IB Diploma offers to students to use their knowledge, understanding and skills in a scenario that addresses a real-life context. Our Year 12 students certainly rose to the occasion this year with a wide variety of attractive, engaging and entertaining presentations.”

I was able to learn a lot from people studying different aspects of science.

I enjoyed the project and thought it was quite a unique experience. We were able to be creative and mould the theme to what we wanted.

I benefitted [from the Project] as I learnt new things as well as obtaining a better understanding around communication and cooperation.

Working with new people was a good icebreaker to get to know other students as someone joining TGS from another school.

I very much enjoyed walking round other people’s presentations and striking up conversations with people I hadn’t met. I also really enjoyed how each group had at least one interactive element, which made it lots more fun.

I found the exhibition to be really well laid out, as everywhere you looked there was something interesting to be done.

I believe that it was very engaging experience which I found incredibly interesting as I enjoy science and didn’t realise it could be applied to this topic!