Little Scientific Talents closes the 2022-2023 academic year with an event in congress format
On 3 and 4 May, the Auditori and Àgora rooms of CosmoCaixa hosted a very special scientific congress, with papers and presentations led by a scientific community made up of children aged 8 to 12. This was the closing event of the 2022-2023 academic year of Little Scientific Talents, the scientific refresher programme for infant and primary school teachers organised by the Barcelona City Council’s Institute of Education, the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation, and EduCaixa. Over the two days, dozens of children have focused on the event with the presentation of the projects they have worked on during the course.
Little Scientific Talents aims to encourage experimentation, enquiry and discovery in science learning among infant and primary school pupils. Thanks to the methodological and didactic updating of the teaching staff behind the programme, pupils from various participating schools have been able to carry out real research work, following the steps of the scientific method, formulating hypotheses, designing experiments to test them, obtaining results and drawing conclusions.
In the 2022-2023 school year, the theme that has focused the research of the participating schools has been “Plants and their key role in sustainability”. Over the two days at CosmoCaixa, the pupils took part in presentations given by eight children from each class on aspects such as plant biodiversity, the importance of plants in maintaining ecosystems, their relationship with greenhouse gases and their capacity to mitigate the impact of climate change on a global and urban scale. The presentations were given simultaneously in the Auditori and Àgora halls, with five or six other classes in each of the spaces.
This course has also allowed the PTC Connections to take place, in which three schools have participated. In this context, the closing ceremony of Little Scientific Talents included the presentation by the students of the results of these connections, which this year were established with the Botanical Garden of Barcelona (two schools) and with the Barcelona Zoo (one school). In addition, the congress included activities offered by CosmoCaixa for all the groups attending, appropriate to the age of each one, and a free visit to the museum.
Ten editions
The 2022-2023 academic year was the tenth edition of Little Scientific Talentes. Throughout these, more than 300 primary schools in the city, both public and private, have participated in the project, more than 650 teachers have received training and more than 14,000 children have been directly involved. In the 2022-2023 academic year, a total of 17 Infant Cycle and Initial Cycle Primary Education Centres, 23 Middle Cycle and Upper Cycle Primary Education Centres, and a total of 1,800 pupils have participated.
