To mark National Science Week, the Science Department held a range of exciting events. Dissection Club is always intriguing and the sesson that ran during Science Week was no exception.

For the past few terms, the UVI Biology class have been running Dissection Club, which has been a really great experience open to all year groups. We thought it would be highly beneficial to provide girls with the opportunity to learn about the anatomy of organisms that would not be studied in depth on the syllabus and also to encourage natural scientific interest. The UVI class have a lesson with the teachers the week before the club is run, to learn how to dissect the organism and about their anatomy, with the aim of the senior students teaching the younger students the following week. This provides us all with a chance to spend time with other year groups, as well as helping us to learn new skills for ourselves.

For British Science Week we had the amazing opportunity to dissect an octopus. This was definitely the most unique anatomy we had observed and it was particularly interesting to learn about the three hearts of an octopus, as well as being able to examine the extremely sharp beak that the octopus uses for feeding. Examining the gills was also fascinating, as it linked with our understanding of gas exchange systems in fish, which is studied in the A Level syllabus, and provided an additional opportunity for the A Level students to discuss the function of the different parts of the gills, passing on knowledge to the GCSE students.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable session for everyone that took part and we all learnt a lot. It was especially nice to see the different year groups working together and participating in a fascinating scientific activity.

Jemima, UVI