A day in the life of a cancer biologist

Ann Hopkins, a senior lecturer in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and a cancer biologist has created a workshop for Primary Schools.

Last year, to coincide with Cancer Week and Science week, members of her lab prepared an outreach session for 6th class students entitled “A day in the life of a cancer biologist”. This took the form of a video which shadowed one of the researchers in her lab, which we showed at the start of pre-organised classroom sessions in which we performed 3 simple science experiments with groups of up to 20 children at a time. The children got to fill in a workbook during the sessions, and to bring them home to finish off some simple science puzzles, colouring etc. The project was well-received by all the schools that were visited in Dublin, Meath, Louth, Kildare & Cavan. They were even featured on an RTE kids news show.

Thanks to the Health Research Board who funded the project, they have the opportunity to send out packs to 15-20 schools who would like to re-create this workshop during Science Week.

The packages would contain our workbooks, the video (on a memory stick) and lab materials to do the experiments (including 20 disposable lab-coats, a hobby microscope, glass slides, 20 sets of disposable gloves etc). The workbooks have a very clear description of the 3 experiments we did in the workshops, and we would include some teacher notes as well.

If you know any Primary Teachers who are interested in receiving a teaching pack please contact Ann Hopkins Email: annhopkins@rcsi.ie