British Science Week 2027 · 5–14 March · Theme: Creativity

Science Week,
without the last-minute panic.

A free, complete plan for British Science Week 2027 — theme Creativity — built for primary schools. A whole-school assembly you can read straight off the screen, five days of science that need nothing more exotic than paper, tape and junk-modelling boxes, and a letter to send home on the Monday. Everything is on this page. Nothing to sign up for.

Read the Assembly Script → See the 5-Day Plan
British Science Week 2027
5–14 March · school week Mon 8 – Fri 12 March
The 2027 theme
Creativity — set by the British Science Association
EYFS – Y6Whole-school ready
5 daysOne idea per day
~10 minsAssembly script
FreeNo sign-up needed
Primary school children taking part in a Spark2 science workshop
🔮

The 5-Day Creativity Plan

British Science Week 2027 opens on a Friday, so most schools run it across the following full week. This plan is built for Monday 8 to Friday 12 March — but every day stands alone if you only have an afternoon.

Mon · Day 1

Ask a Better Question

Working scientifically

Every discovery started as a question somebody was brave enough to ask out loud. Today the children learn the difference between a question you can look up and a question you have to test.

Try this: The Question Wall. Children write any “I wonder why…” question on a sticky note. Sort them into two columns: Look it up and Test it. The second column becomes the rest of your week.
Tue · Day 2

Design It

Creativity in engineering

Creativity in science usually looks like a constraint. Give children a tight brief and limited materials, and the inventiveness arrives on its own.

Try this: The Ten-Piece Challenge. Each pair gets exactly ten items from the junk box and one brief — build something that moves a marble from the table to the floor slowly. Ten pieces, no more.
Wed · Day 3

Test, Fail, Change It

Fair testing · iteration

The day that does the real work. Children rebuild yesterday’s design after testing it — and learn that in science a thing that did not work is data, not a disaster.

Try this: Version 2. Every group tests their Tuesday build, records one measurement, changes exactly one thing, and tests again. Only one change — that is what makes it a fair test.
Thu · Day 4

Where Science Meets Art

Cross-curricular

The theme at its widest. Symmetry in insects, spirals in shells, the colour of a sunset, the engineering inside a cathedral window. Science and art asking the same questions in different languages.

Try this: Nature’s Patterns. Children photograph or sketch three repeating patterns from the school grounds, then explain what the pattern does for the plant or animal.
Fri · Day 5

The Showcase

Oracy · sharing

Children present what they made and what went wrong. Invite another class, or parents at pick-up. The presenting is the point — explaining your thinking is a scientific skill in itself.

Try this: The 60-Second Pitch. Each group gets one minute and must include the sentence “the thing that surprised us was…”. Photos for the newsletter.
📣

Assembly Script

A whole-school assembly to open British Science Week. About 10 minutes, Reception to Year 6. Read it straight from this page, or paste the script into your own slides — it needs no images to work.

8 parts · ~10 minutes · Reception–Year 6 See the week it launches →
Pacing note. Read straight through, the script itself is about six minutes. The rest of the ten is pauses, children answering, and the moments where you hold something up — assemblies always run longer than the page suggests. If your slot is tight, drop one of the shorter parts rather than rushing the whole thing. We are adding demonstration moments to this script ahead of 2027.
Part 1
~1 min

Open with the week

Name the week and the theme straight away.

“Good morning. This week is British Science Week — it happens in schools right across the country at the same time, and this year it has a theme. The theme is one word: Creativity. Now, I suspect some of you think creativity belongs in art lessons. By Friday I think you will have changed your mind.”
Part 2
~1.5 min

What creativity actually means in science

Reframe it: creativity is not decoration, it is problem-solving.

“Creativity is not about being good at drawing. Creativity is what happens when you have a problem nobody has solved, and the usual answer does not work, and you have to think of something new. That is exactly what a scientist does. Every single thing in this hall — the lights, the windows, the microphone, the shoes on your feet — exists because somebody looked at a problem and thought of something nobody had thought of before.”
Part 3
~1.5 min

The question that started it

Give one concrete example of a creative question. Keep it simple and physical.

“In 1928 a scientist called Alexander Fleming came back from his summer holiday to a messy laboratory. One of his dishes of bacteria had gone mouldy while he was away, and the experiment was ruined. But Fleming noticed something. Everywhere the mould had grown, the bacteria had died. He could have washed the dish up and started again. Instead he asked a question: what is this mould doing? That mould gave us penicillin, a medicine that has saved more lives than almost anything else ever invented. It started because somebody looked at something that had gone wrong and got curious instead of annoyed.”
Part 4
~1.5 min

Failure is the method

The most useful idea in the assembly. Say it plainly.

“Here is something I want you to remember all week. In science, when something does not work, that is not you failing. That is the experiment telling you something. Real scientists do not get it right first time. They get it wrong, carefully, and write down exactly how it went wrong, and then they change one thing and try again. The children who learn the most this week will be the ones whose first idea collapses.”
Part 5
~1 min

Science is everywhere, including in art

Bridge to Thursday’s theme. Point at the room.

“Look at the windows. Somebody worked out how to make sand transparent. Look at the ceiling — somebody calculated how to hold all that weight up over your heads. The paint on the walls, the colour of your jumper, the way sound reaches the back of this hall. Science is not a subject that lives in a lab. It is the reason this room stands up.”
Part 6
~1.5 min

Set the week’s challenge

Tell them what is coming. Specifics raise the energy.

“So here is your week. Monday, every class writes questions — and we are only interested in the ones we cannot just look up. Tuesday, you get a box of junk and a problem to solve. Wednesday, you test what you built, and I promise you some of it will fall over, and that is the best thing that can happen. Thursday we go outside and look for patterns. And Friday, you present. Not just what you made — what surprised you.”
Part 7
~1 min

Who this is for

The inclusion beat. Worth not skipping.

“One more thing. If you have ever thought ‘I am not a science person’ — this is your week. Scientists are not one kind of person. Some are brilliant at maths. Some are brilliant at noticing. Some are brilliant at not giving up. Some are brilliant at asking the awkward question that everyone else was too embarrassed to ask. If you are any of those, you are already doing it.”
Part 8
~1 min

Close

End on the instruction, not the summary.

“Your job this week is simple. Notice one thing you have walked past a hundred times, and ask why it is like that. Bring that question to your teacher. The best one in the school gets read out on Friday. Off you go — have a brilliant Science Week.”
✨

Classroom Activities

Two per phase. 30–45 minutes each. Everything on the materials lists is either in your junk-modelling box or already in the classroom.

KS1 · EYFS–Y2

The Wondering Wall

Time: 30 minutes · Day: Best on Mon (Ask a Better Question)

Children learn that a good scientific question is one you can find out by doing something. The wall stays up all week and the questions get answered as you go.

  1. Show three objects: a feather, a pebble, a crumpled ball of paper. Ask “which lands first?” and take votes. Do not tell them the answer.
  2. Each child writes or draws one “I wonder…” question on a sticky note.
  3. Sort them together into two headings on the wall: We can look this up and We have to try it.
  4. Pick one from the “try it” column and test it there and then. Drop the feather and the pebble. Then add the paper ball — crumpled, then flat.
  5. Over the week, tick off questions as classes answer them.
Materials: Sticky notes, a feather, a small stone, scrap paper, a stretch of wall or a flipchart sheet.
KS1 · EYFS–Y2

Junk Box Movers

Time: 40 minutes · Day: Best on Tue (Design It)

The simplest possible design brief, and the one that produces the most inventiveness: make something that moves without being picked up.

  1. Set the brief out loud: “Make something that travels across the table. You are not allowed to carry it.”
  2. Pairs choose from the junk box — tubes, lids, lolly sticks, straws, elastic bands, tape.
  3. Build for 20 minutes. Resist the urge to help. The wobbly ones matter.
  4. Race them along a taped start line. Measure distance in hand-spans or cubes.
  5. One question to close: “What would you change if you built it again?” Write the answer on the model for Wednesday.
Materials: Junk-modelling box, masking tape, elastic bands, straws, lolly sticks, cubes or rulers for measuring.
KS2 · Y3–Y6

One Change Only

Time: 45 minutes · Day: Best on Wed (Test, Fail, Change It)

The fair-testing activity that actually teaches fair testing, because the constraint does the teaching. Groups may change exactly one variable between runs — and must predict the effect before they test.

  1. Each group builds a simple paper helicopter (one A4 sheet, one paperclip) and drops it from a fixed height. Time the fall three times. Record the average.
  2. Each group now chooses one change and writes a prediction: “If we … then the fall time will … because …”
  3. Possible changes: wing length, wing width, number of paperclips, paper thickness. One only.
  4. Rebuild, re-drop, re-time. Compare to the prediction.
  5. Plenary: whose prediction was wrong, and what did that tell you? Make a point of celebrating the wrong ones.
Materials: A4 paper, paperclips, scissors, stopwatches or phone timers, a chair or low table to drop from.
KS2 · Y3–Y6

Design a Creature for a New World

Time: 45 minutes · Day: Best on Thu (Science Meets Art)

Adaptation taught through invention. Children design an animal for an invented habitat and must justify every feature scientifically — which quietly covers most of the Y4 and Y6 living-things objectives.

  1. Give each group a habitat card: permanent darkness; a world of constant wind; an ocean with no surface; a planet where it is always -40°C.
  2. Groups design one creature that could survive there. Full-page drawing, labelled.
  3. The rule: every single feature needs a “because”. Large eyes because there is no light. Low body because of the wind.
  4. Swap drawings between groups. The receiving group tries to find one feature that would not actually work, and says why.
  5. Display alongside photographs of real animals with the same adaptations — tarsier, albatross, anglerfish, arctic fox.
Materials: A3 paper, colouring pencils, habitat cards (write them on index cards), optional tablets for looking up real equivalents.

Get the editable version — and next term’s packs

The British Science Association’s own full activity packs land in January 2027. Ours is here now, and we will send you the editable slides for this assembly plus every pack we build for the rest of the primary calendar — Safer Internet Day, World Book Day, Earth Day and the rest. We will also tell you the moment the 2027 Creativity workshop programme is confirmed. One email a month at most.

Please add a valid email address.
Thank you — you are on the list.
Safer Internet Day (Tuesday 9 February 2027) is already built and live — take it now if that one is on your calendar too.
💬

Parent Communication Template

Send home on the Monday morning, or drop into the newsletter. Tells parents what is happening and gives them one thing to do at the dinner table.

Letter / Newsletter Insert

British Science Week at [School Name]

Dear Parents and Carers,

This week is British Science Week, and the national theme for 2027 is Creativity.

We are using the week to make a point that we think matters: science is not a subject about memorising facts. It is a subject about solving problems nobody has solved yet — and that takes imagination as much as knowledge.

Across the week the children will write questions that cannot simply be looked up, build something from a box of junk to meet a tight brief, test it, watch some of it fall over, and rebuild it having changed exactly one thing. On Thursday they will go outside and hunt for patterns in the natural world. On Friday they will present what they made — including what went wrong.

One thing you could do at home. Ask your child this: “What did you try this week that did not work?” — and then be genuinely pleased about the answer. Children learn very quickly from the adults around them whether a failed attempt is something to hide or something to talk about. This week we are trying hard to teach them it is the second one.

If you work in anything with a scientific, technical or engineering side to it — and that is a much wider group of people than it sounds — and you would be willing to come and talk to a class for twenty minutes, please do let us know. Children’s sense of what a scientist looks like is formed early, and it is formed by who they meet.

With best wishes,

[Your name]
[School Name]

📚

British Science Week Resources

Trusted UK sources to use alongside this kit. The first one is the official campaign — start there.

British Science Association

The official British Science Week site

The campaign itself. Theme announcements, the official activity packs (full packs land January 2027), the poster competition and the schools registration.

britishscienceweek.org →

Explorify · Wellcome

Free daily science thinking activities

Odd One Out, What If, Zoom In Zoom Out. Five-minute whole-class activities that are exactly the right shape for a creativity theme. Free for UK primary schools.

explorify.uk →

STEM Learning

Primary science resource library

The national STEM centre. Thousands of quality-assured primary resources, plus free STEM Ambassadors who will come into school and talk to your classes.

stem.org.uk/primary →

CREST Awards

SuperStar Awards for primary

The British Science Association’s own accreditation scheme. Eight challenges earns a CREST SuperStar Award — a neat way to give Science Week an outcome children keep.

crestawards.org →

Royal Institution

ExpeRimental · films and demos

Short films of simple experiments designed for home and classroom, from the people behind the Christmas Lectures. Excellent for the assembly or an end-of-day slot.

rigb.org →

BBC Bitesize

KS1 and KS2 science

Free curriculum-aligned video and reading for every primary science unit. The quickest way to fill a gap if a question from the Wondering Wall goes somewhere you had not planned.

bbc.co.uk/bitesize →

What happened last British Science Week
98
schools
33,300
children
9.8/10
average rating
91%
asked for the same presenter

We ran the Curiosity Workshop across England in March 2026 and published everything — every metric, all 43 written reviews, and the full list of all 98 schools. Read the impact report →
Planning further ahead?

We’re building the Creativity workshop now

Science Week is one week, and every primary school in the country wants it — so dates go early. We are currently putting together our British Science Week 2027 programme around the Creativity theme. It is not finished yet, so we are not going to pretend otherwise and list a running order we might still change.

What we can tell you is the shape: a Spark2 presenter comes to your school for the day, and every class from EYFS to Year 6 gets its own age-appropriate session. If you would like to hear what it includes the moment it is confirmed — and have first look at the available dates — the sign-up above is the quickest way, or come and see what we currently run.

1,800+Schools visited
383,000+Students reached
EYFS–Y6Age-appropriate
See British Science Week at Spark2 →

For primary science leads

Most primary science leads are a teacher with a TLR, no department and nobody to ask. We’re building a community for that — monthly CPD and somewhere to put the questions. Join the waitlist →