"On the 28th of June 2016, 4 Year Eights were chosen to attend a science meet. This event was a workshop designed to encourage the younger generation to write scientific articles, specifically for the Young Scientist Journal. It took place at St Michael’s School in Otford.
The afore-mentioned magazine is an internationally recognised society that takes articles that have been written by 12-20 year olds and publishes them in their annual journal or on their blog. The articles have to be science related, such as space. However the topics can include many abstract concepts such as ‘The Science behind Chocolate’.
The lady who was running it was called Christina Astin and she is the co-founder of the Young Scientists Journals. She was an enthusiastic physicist and was keen to share her knowledge in an interesting and interactive presentation, making it an enjoyable experience for all students who attended. She was informing us how anybody between the ages of 12-20 could edit, write, design or market for the journal. In all the whole project is entirely run by children to young adults, hopefully encouraging them to pursue scientific careers.
After the talk, we watched a brief experiment involving a flying teabag. Christina Astin then asked all of the students to write about it in a certain style (e.g. A Children’s Article or chat show or a Wikipedia article…) This enabled us to practise and improve our skills in writing with varying tones.
Hopefully, these techniques will come across effectively in our writing at school.
It was a really fun experience and we all recommend it to anyone who enjoys any type of science, in or outside of lessons. " Harriet, Y8