This week, Year 3 enjoyed a brilliant Science Week exploring the question “What is a scientist?” 🧪✨ Our aim was to broaden children’s ideas about who scientists are and what they do.

🌟 What We Learned

Throughout the week, we explored that:

  • Scientists ask questions and look for answers
  • They work in many places, not just laboratories
  • Scientists come from all backgrounds
  • Science includes many careers: medicine, engineering, space, climate, food science, technology and more 🌍
  • Anyone can be a scientist! 🌈

We also challenged common stereotypes, showing scientists who work in teams and in all kinds of environments: oceans, hospitals, forests, kitchens, zoos and space agencies.

✏️ Highlights of the Week included:

🎤 Assembly

We launched Science Week with a whole‑school assembly introducing our theme.

🔍 What Does a Scientist Look Like?

The children began the week by drawing what they thought a scientist looked like. Many drawings included the classic goggles and lab coat!

👩‍🏫 Scientist of the Day

Throughout the week, we learned about a different Scientist of the Day. These diverse real‑life scientists helped the children rethink what a scientist can be. This included: Jane Goodall, David Attenborough, Maggie Aderin Pocock and Yannis Pitsiladis.

🖍️ New Drawings at the end of the week

On Friday, the children repeated the drawing activity. Their new pictures showed a much wider variety of scientists  astronauts, doctors, engineers, wildlife experts and even children acting as scientists themselves! 🌟

📚 VIPERS – Leonora Bolt: Secret Inventor

In VIPERS, we read from Leonora Bolt: Secret Inventor by Lucy Brandt. The children loved Leonora, a young inventor who creates imaginative gadgets on her island.

We used the text to practise our VIPERS skills:
Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarising.
It linked perfectly with our theme showing that inventors and engineers are scientists too! 🛠️⚡

Science Week was a fantastic opportunity for Year 3 to broaden their understanding of what a scientist truly is. The children showed brilliant curiosity, asked thoughtful questions, and became much more confident in seeing themselves as young scientists. We were so proud of how their ideas grew throughout the week and we hope their enthusiasm for science continues long after Science Week is over! 🔬🌟