Being curious – British Science Week assembly

An extract from the resource:

Tell the children that we humans wanted to know more about Mars, so we sent our spaceships, satellites and rovers there. It costs millions of pounds to do this and takes years to get there. But still, our curiosity drives us onwards – no matter what the costs or the risks.

Explain that now, British scientists are getting involved with this rover called Rosalind. She is named after the important British female scientist Rosalind Franklin, who helped us to discover more about the building blocks of life: DNA.

This rover was built in Britain and is part of a wider European Space Agency project to find out if there was once life on the sandy deserts of Mars.

Say: Let’s have a show of hands. Who thinks there once was life on Mars? Ask some pupils why. Make the link to water as a basic requirement for life.

Perhaps when Rosalind the rover gets to Mars, we will find out once and for all whether there was once life on our neighbouring planet!

Curiosity questions

Tell the children that as it is British Science week, you want them to think like scientists. You want them to feed their curiosity by asking and answering questions, finding information and presenting it, using equipment carefully and taking measurements. You want them to be curious little rovers! You are going to launch them from this assembly and send them off on a mission to join other British scientists around the country.

To do this, explain that you are going to give each class a Curious Question. One at a time, explain what each class has to do, then give the printout of each slide to one child from each year group.