Interview with Claire Welsh - Primary Schools Programme Manager

ER You've already talked about the different techniques, can you talk a little more about them and how they relate to learning?

CW ((pause)) Well starting, I mean trying to start from, from what the children are, going to know, initially, so, for instance the start of most of the shows what we would do is try and start off with something that they're, that they know already, really. So for example in the forces show, the junior school kids, we start off with a, it's just a beach ball "well how can I get the ball to move?" and so they all, you know, they kick it to you or they punch it to you and different things. "Right, right what do we call these forces?" They're all pushing forces, you know. And before we're going on to, you know, friction and air resistance, all this sort of thing, we're basically covering stuff that they, they know that they'll know but, it's partly just "Ah, this is easy, it's going to be fine" you know "I can relax, I don't need to think 'oh what's going to happen in this show'." You know the first hands are going up, they're getting all the answers right so, a lot of it is, getting confidence really, at the start and I think that's, you know, that's essential really to, lure them in slowly, then throw the hard questions in later ((said jokingly)).

Starting off from, yeah, so starting off from knowledge that's already known. Start, particularly with the younger ones, starting off with familiar sort of contexts and things. - And yet also trying to do, trying to be exciting as well, I mean I know the new Pushes and Pulls show that is, is going on in June - there we talked, you know, talked about lots of different ideas and, there's, it's difficult, particularly with infants you sort of think well we want to be familiar but on the other hand if we do the stuff that is so familiar that they've done last week in school, then we're not doing anything special. So there we've been talking well, could we do something about, you know, in the building site kind of thing, because maybe we could do some large scale equipment or something, I don't know if we quite have a JCB in it, but you know. Cause that's kind of familiar, kind of familiar, you know, they watch "Bob The Builder" on telly and that sort of thing. But it's not kind of, you know, too much sort of in the kitchen pulling the drawer open sort of thing. So it's, it's familiar but also trying to be exciting as well. ((pause))

Think, what else? - I mean in terms of just thinking of the, the sort of, workshops, kind of thing. I mean there we would tend to have some kind of worksheet, but it's more, it's more keeping people on task rather than, rather than anything onerous, really. It's more, so that you don't get your, your, occasional child who sort of comes up to you and says "Oh, I've finished" you know and, cause they've just gone and looked, glanced at everything and finished. So, so there'll be, it'll be very restricted, the kind of written stuff that we would do at primary level anyway. And again, the trail cards very much designed so I think they've only got one word to fill in on most of them, really. So, so you don't get, people don't see Techniquest as coming here and "Oh they gave us hundred page worksheet to fill in" you know. It's, it's not, you know, if, if you're not good at reading and writing hopefully it shouldn't affect you too much. So we try, I mean one thing I noticed last year, I did, we did a workshop, Animal Magic. Lots of practical things, but I did give out a little worksheet, it was just a A5 sort of folded thing, lots of pictures on it, probably about 10 words you had to fill in, the kids all interested, all you know we did a little presentation at the beginning, and I remember gave this one sheet to this lad and straight away, you could tell that his, just, just attitude just changed and he was basically, he was about 10 but basically was, virtually a non-reader. And, I remember thinking at the time, what I should do next year is maybe send this out to the schools beforehand and say you can use this as, if you like, if you want to, sort the children in to groups, get them to, you know, have one sheet per group, you know you could do it like that and, you know. I, I mean I'm sure it's happened in other workshops but I haven't picked it up, you know, it's probably - cause some of the children you know, they just look over someone's shoulder and you know, copy whatever's been written down and that sort of thing and get around it that way. But I thought I don't want any child put off. Because basically this lad he had, he had a strop for half an hour, through out the whole of the workshop really. And it was such as shame because it, as I say, there was probably only 10 words that needed filling in, but of course he, probably had a hundred words to read on it and, you know as a, virtual non-reader of course that was "h" and his way of, getting at you know, so it's, so it wasn't - the shame of that was to have a strop, and then of course he, you know, we weren't focused on the fact that he couldn't read the thing. So it's, it's sort of being aware of those sort of things, you know, I don't want the, the kind of non-academic child to miss out here. It shouldn't be, that shouldn't happen really.

So, and it, it's difficult to get round because I mean, by using our cards for voting and things, you know, the questions will go up on the screen and I always say to the presenters that I know it, it can be quite difficult sometimes to read, you know, to read them all through but I said "you must read them all through, you can't expect every 10 year old to be able to read what's on the screen." Even, no matter how you know, I try and word it so that I use as few words as I possibly can but you, you've got to make sure that you read them all so that they're not penalised because of reading, and those sort of things. So I think, I think that's a, I don't know if that's the point at all ((starting to laugh))