Lord Winston teaches primary school children about the human brain

Imperial academics encourage children to get excited about science - News

Monday 25 June 2007
By Naomi Weston

Pupils from Wendell Park Primary School in Hammersmith received a visit from Professor Lord Robert Winston last week, who talked to them about the human brain and awarded science prizes.

Year six pupils from the school had been learning about the human body the previous week with the help of two Imperial academics, Dr Catherine Williamson and Richard Gibbs from the Division of Surgery, Oncology, Reproductive Biology and Anaesthetics.

The hands-on teaching sessions involved getting the children to spell their names out using hand language to teach them about disability awareness and deafness. The pupils also learnt how to carry out cardio-respiratory resuscitation, review scans of foetuses and they looked at a model of the human aorta. The children then made a poster in small groups illustrating what they had learnt about.

Lord Winston presented prizes to the year six pupils and rewarded the group with the best poster. Pupils Niaz Livani and Nadine El-Dewiny won the top prize for their poster on the foetus. Nadine is keen to become a paediatrician in the future and Niaz wants to work in the media.

Lord Winston went on to talk to the year one pupils about the brain and performed an interactive experiment to show them how the brain is protected by cerebrospinal fluid involving cracking eggs.