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YEAR 6 FORENSIC SCIENCE DAY

Forensic Science Day

At St Margaret's, the Forensic Science Day has become a much-anticipated whole-day Science extravaganza in the Summer Term for our Year 6 pupils.

As in Midsomer, Gosfield has witnessed a wide range of alarming crimes over the recent years with thefts, ransom notes and murders.  Last year, we set up our own social networking site and infiltrated it with "home-schooled pupils" that were not all they seemed, so leading to a burglary and a valuable lesson for the pupils on the dangers of disclosing information on-line.  This year, the children will be given a confidential briefing paper from MI5 on the previous Friday, telling them that there is evidence that country churchyards are being used as dead-letter drops and they need to be at the church early on the Monday morning.  When they arrive, they will find a range of evidence which they will collect, but on the walk back to school they will stumble across the dead body of the vicar (what a lovely man, lying there in a garden with fake blood on his head!) - his interference in the spy-ring has lead to his death! 

Crime scenes are realistically handled and Essex Police have always been fantastic in supplying expertise - this year an Operational Forensic Officer (yes, a real one!) will help the children collect the evidence at the two scenes of crimes.  The children then return to school and break into separate labs to analyse the evidence:

• a fingerprinting lab for the taking and comparison of prints
• a dentist who will be making dental impressions of the suspects for the purpose of comparison to evidence found at the scene of the crime
• a lab where the children will use our e-fit software to create a likeness of a suspect from a written description
• a DNA lab where a parent is supplying the equipment and a (real!) scientist to demonstrate DNA identification technology of hairs
• a chromatography & graphology lab to study the ink and writing in a letter found
• a chemical  lab for pH analysis of powder and liquids found in the churchyard
• a cryptology lab to decode a message left at the the scene
• a on-line research lab to analyse a flight number left at the scene

The children are given cards on which to record their findings, and then mid-afternoon we gather together to pool our results and decide upon a suspect.  Essex Police, once again, are supplying a uniformed officer to listen to the evidence of the children and make the arrest, handcuff the guilty party and lead them away for further questioning.  This always generates a huge amount of excitement with the children, seeing one of their teachers arrested by a real policeman!   One year we even drove the guilty teacher to the local police station in the school mini-bus and left her there, handcuffed, as we all drove away!  You can imagine the thrill of doing that!

The whole day can only run with the help of a team of parent and outside volunteer helpers - this year we are using fourteen extra adults in this "science and drama" production to run the labs, act as various suspects, a victim, "the Man from MI5" and I've even secured a heavily accented Austrian national to play "the Man from Interpol"!  The serious planning starts two months before the day, and we have a number of meetings to decide upon the theme for this year, the crime, the evidence and all the cameo roles.  The level of enthusiasm and goodwill amongst our helpers is enormous and it simply would not be possible to run the day without them.  We all feel that it is great  opportunity for the pupils to use and develop their scientific skills, consider the application of science in the real world, and think about the role of forensic science in the fight against crime.  Yes, I know, you can spot that we all love watching CSI and Law & Order endlessly, but the children do really enjoy the day and learn a great deal too!!