My ’22 Top Ten – 3. Earth Club

“Pupils are happy and well cared for. They attend a range of different activities, such as girls’ football, yoga and the Earth club.”

I’m fairly certain one of my activities has never been highlighted in an Ofsted inspection report before, but 2022 wasn’t a normal year, and Earth Club isn’t a normal activity.

Having received Stratum Young funding from the Yorkshire Geological Society, I’ve been exploring different ways to take fossils and Earth science into schools across Yorkshire. One of the things I wanted to try was an after-school club, and I was lucky that Acomb Primary School were happy for me to try it out with them.

So, throughout the year, I’ve been running series of one-hour sessions for different year groups. We’ve asked important questions, investigated scientific topics, curated geology collections, carried out experiments, and made marvellous creations. Not every session worked perfectly, of course, but I’ve lost track of how many times the children had brilliant ideas or produced excellent work. The feedback for Earth Club has been overwhelmingly positive.

I’ll be starting up again in January, and now have a programme of activities suitable for Key Stage 1 and 2. If you know a Yorkshire school that might be interested in setting up its own Earth Club, feel free to drop me a line!