Science club

A science club can take many different forms and can be intended for different pupil ages of groups (e.g. year group, KS3 or gifted and talented) and/or different themes either general or specific (e.g. astronomy, environmental, making robots, etc). The main objective is make the science aspect hands-on, exciting, engaging and fun!
Those who work in Specialist Science Schools may find that there is strong emphasis towards running Science Clubs and this may also extend to catering for pupils outside of the School and even outside of School hours!
Suppose the science club is for Year 7. and is held either in the lunch break or after school for 30 to 45 minutes. That is a short time to carry out an activity and usually means that all the materials need to be prepared and laid out ahead to avoid queuing or waiting. Furthermore there will be probably be little time for clearing up at the end. This is particularly true if it is a lunchtime event and the pupils need to get to their next lesson. A maximum number of participants will need to decided and careful planning of each activity is crucial for a successful and enjoyable pupil experience.
Ideally the teacher responsible (together with the lead or responsible technician) should plan the programme for the whole year and take into account other events in the school calender that might clash, both whole school and science dept. event such as assessed practical exams or coursework that are require technician hours. This plan should also incorporate risk assessing all of the activities to ensure that they are safe. Many of the experiements that are carried out in the Science Club may be different from the "run-of-the-mill" type practicals that the technician or teacher is familair with. So this process of risk assessment beforehand is even more important.
The amount of technician support needed must be considered and will vary. For example the planning stage of a bridge building event in the computer room probably needs no technician support while the second test part of an egg dropping event event may need a technician upstairs recording the weight of the pupils anti-smash egg carrier, a teacher supervising the drop and 2 technicians downstairs recording the result, making sure no one is on the landing area and taking photos!
The teacher responsible will usually want to avoid activities that are already part of the school’s Keystage 3 or 4 schemes of work for science, unless the approach is very different. Slime, for instant, is a great science club activity. It is made from diluted PVA art & craft glue and 4% Borax and they mix it up with different food colouring and fluorescein and do simple tests on it. This is very different to, say a Year 10 investigation using clear PVA solution and measuring viscosity with different dilutions of Borax. There are many chemistry investigations, quite a few loosely physics based competitions but biologically inspired ideas tend to be fewer in number.
There a number of websites and texts worth consulting for ideas and materials that have been recommended by science technicians on the Tecknow website.