British Science Week ideas for 2023

British Science Week ideas for 2023

British Science Week is around the corner, and schools need to get prepared to celebrate science. Starting from the 10th March - 19th March 2023, British Science Week aims to celebrate everything to do with science. The theme for this year is built on connections, which is a wide theme with many avenues to explore.

SBMs must get prepared for the week and think about activities and ways to get your school involved. To help you with this, we have created some British Science Week ideas for 2023.

Theme: connections

The theme of connections opens up different areas that you can guide your school to explore. All innovations in science, technology, engineering and maths are built on connections between people. You could encourage your school to explore the different ways connections come up across all the areas of science. Or even the connection between science and the internet, where the world can access many resources and knowledge.

British Science Week ideas

Use these British Science Week ideas to be prepared for the week and make sure everyone is on board. Get the school involved and celebrate everything science with your school and the wider community.

Hold a staff meeting

Gather your staff before the week starts to introduce the theme of British Science Week. Outline your plans for the school with various activities you may want to hold. This helps prepare staff by informing them of your plans so that they can think about what activities to do with their class. Also, they can tie their ideas into your plans and connect them working together as a team.

Take the opportunity to be clear with your staff on what you want their ideas to be. Give them a direction to centre their ideas around and guide them to reach that goal. This ensures that students have a focus or a thread through all activities they engage in. Plus, it gives them a lot of knowledge in all different areas and a variety whilst being beneficial towards their learning.

Attend or organise events

One of the best British Science Week ideas is to attend local science events or create your own one for the school. There are various science fairs in local areas that you can encourage your school to attend. Research these science fairs and see what dates they are. Spread the word to your staff and create posters to display across the school to get students interested.

You can also create your own event for students to attend. Think about a subject within science that relates to the theme and hold an event about it. It can be a simple science fair with the community or a science experiment fair. Or even a science workshop with local industry experts. Whatever you choose the event to be, create excitement through assemblies, posters and demonstrations to gain interest.

Get the community and school involved

To create an exciting British Science Week, reach out to the community and the whole school to get as many people as possible involved. Doing this ensures that celebrating science is exciting and enjoyable as the more people to help you, the more variety of activities you can offer.

Contact local businesses to help you with any events you are planning or for any resources you may need. Put posters around key local places for any of your own events to involve your community. Also, see what your community are doing for the week as a possibility to get some classes to go to.

Encourage students to help with various activities to set up or plan. Consider creating a committee where you can let students from different year groups plan what they want to do. They can even be involved in all the stages of planning and reap the benefits in the end result.

Involve parents

Think about how you can get parents involved throughout the week. Send out an update on the school portal informing parents of your plans for the week to keep them in the loop. Entice them to participate through a family science theme. This could be at one of the events or a whole new event like a parents evening but with science activities. You could get some students involved by giving parents a demonstration of various fun experiments.

Enter the British Science Week competition

Encourage students to enter the British Science Week poster competition. Make staff aware of it with the details so that they can tell their class about it and set poster making as an activity to do. This fun competition is for children up to the age of 14 years old. It’s a great way for students to explore a STEM topic through art. Exercise their creativity and thoughts on science that links to the theme. The winners will receive science themed prizes too. 

For more information and how to enter take a look at the British Science Week competition page.

Show and tell

The best way to get students passionate about STEM is to make them experts. Encourage a school wide show and tell for each class to do in front of each other. Get staff to choose the best ones to present in front of the school in assemblies. To reduce stress and nervousness advise staff to set this task in groups so students can work together and use each other's knowledge on STEM.

This show and tell could be demonstrating an experiment or a particular topic they are interested in. Ensure to have plenty of poster paper for students to brainstorm on before creating their PowerPoint.

Run your own science competition

Another great way to celebrate science is through a school competition that you can run for students to participate in. This could be creating a model or invention or art about scientists/topics. These finished creations can be displayed throughout the school too, so students are proud of their science creations.

Offer science prizes for winners, such as a STEM kit where children can build and explore different areas of science, for runners up you could offer science stickers.

Use these British Science Week ideas to create a passion for science amongst students and celebrate British Science Week. Ensure to plan various activities for your school and update your staff, community and parents to keep plans tied together and make celebrations huge. Let students have fun with these ideas and take on board the ideas for yourself in terms of planning and organising the week in advance.