2019-20 has been another successful and exciting year for the Science Department. We started by celebrating excellent exam results from the previous year and by welcoming record numbers of students onto our A-level and KS5 BTEC courses.

Careers day in December saw our year 7 students take part in a “Mission to Mars!”. Each form took part in the role play activity where half of them worked as a team of scientists on Mars and the other half worked in various roles at mission control on Earth. They had to work as a team to identify rock samples and lifeforms and get their space craft ready to return their team back to Earth. Some form groups were more successful than others, but all worked brilliantly as a team and got an insight into a variety of space related careers. A lot of fun was had by all!

The science department always love World Book Day and the March 2020 edition didn’t let us down. The Science team were thrilled this year to win the Best Dressed Department competition when we came to school dressed as characters from Peter Pan. We were also very proud of Miss Waterfall who won the individual prize for Best Dressed Female Teacher after painting herself green to come as the crocodile, complete with clock and tick.

Riding high on our successes the previous week, we could not have had a better follow up with British Science Week. The Science Department would like to thank all of the staff and students that got involved to make the week so special. Here is a small taste of what took place. Year 7 solved a crime scene, year 8 looked at the link between science fiction and science fact in collaboration with our colleagues in the English department, year 9 investigated science careers and year 10 got involved in sports science. In addition, many competitions ran that week including putting staff and students through their paces by testing their practical skills in moving tiny seeds with tweezers whilst dressed in an array of science gear. The staff champion was Mrs Harcup and the student champion was Kacper Michalik in year 10. In addition to this, Mr Maher won the staff science week cross curricular competition with his brilliant project on Quantum Computing. Also during Science Week Mr Dube welcomed year 6 students from Oakway Academy and Victoria Primary Academy. The students took part in a carousel of challenges and demonstrations and we were all so impressed by these budding scientists. The future of science at Hatton is looking very bright.

The Science department at Hatton is also home to our Health and Social care team, who ran a brilliant HBACC project this year for our Year 8 students. Students measured their physiological data and interpreted it against National Guidelines. They then chose a patient and researched ways to reduce the risks to future health. Miss McLaughlin was impressed with a variety of skills that students demonstrated, ranging from correct use of equipment, team work, data handling, analysis, presentation and research.

Dr Bell has been so thrilled with the number of students who have engaged with her astronomy videos on the Academies twitter page. It has been wonderful seeing the photos of planets, satellites, the moon etc that students have sent in. The competition to design a T-shirt for Dr Bell also saw Hatton students get really creative and we congratulate Jamie Hopkin in year 9 who was crowned winner with his amazing design which included the history of space travel. Plans are now afoot for Dr Bell to make a monthly “Watch this space” video with the aim to get students and staff to make guest appearances.  You can watch Dr Bell's final video of the year here.

The whole of the Science team are looking forward to a superb 2020-21 academic year. We are excited to meet our new year 7 and year 12 students and to welcome back the other year groups. We have high hopes of retaining our World Book Day crown and making Science Week bigger and better than ever!