Over the last few years, KLB School has been involved in the Famelab Academy, a schools based competition organised by Cheltenham Festivals which focuses on inspiring science communication for year 9 students. The aim of the competition is to give students the skills to research, write and present a speech on a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) topic of their choice. At KLB, this was carried out as a weekly club run by the science department where students would meet up to learn the skills of good communication, inspired by famous science presenters, and then research and prepare their own speech on a topic that interested them.

On Thursday 27 February, this culminated in six students competing against each other at the KLB School final. With speech topics covering tornadoes, time travel, animal psychology, jellyfish, genetics and the science of investigating bigfoot, the final event was entertaining and informative as students tried to show the three key characteristics of good science communication – including good reliable scientific content, speaking with clarity and performing with individual charisma. All six finalists should be proud of the effort they put into research, preparing, memorising and performing fantastic speeches to an audience of year 8 students and three judges, Miss Cozens (Head of Physics), Jon Dexter (Science teacher and Famelab club coordinator) and Miss Khan, Headteacher and teacher of Physics.

After much deliberation, the judges awarded first place to Roxy Downs with her interesting and dynamic talk on jelly fish biology, and runner up awards to Amelie Daniel (Why do we not look alike?) and Sophie Rennie (Can we time travel?). Roxy will now attend a two-day masterclass run by the Cheltenham Festivals Famelab team and then represent KLB School at the Gloucestershire Final at Rose’s Theatre in Tewkesbury on 20 March. We wish her every success.

We will update next month on the outcome of the competition final; in the meantime, huge congratulations to the six finalists Sophie Rennie, Ethan March, Lucia Lang, Samuel Jones, Amelie Daniel and Roxy Downs. Well done to you all!