Visit activity: Front Page News

In this activity students adopt the role of a newspaper reporter and collect information in the Plasticity: 100 years of making plastics exhibition to create a front page story about the invention of the amazing new material Bakelite.

Leo Baekeland invented the first truly synthetic plastic, Bakelite, in 1907. Already a successful businessman, Baekeland quickly exploited his invention ahead of his competitors. The potential for his new material was unprecedented; the explosion of the ‘plastics age’ was about to begin…

Using this activity

Before the visit look at examples of recent science newspaper stories to analyse how the stories are presented, the level of language used, and so on. If you have the Giant Leaps book produced jointly by the Sun and the Science Museum, you could use one of the newspaper stories from the book. Otherwise you could use the following sample pages:

Giant Leaps sample pages (pdf)

The activity is based in the first section of the Plasticity exhibition ‑ 'The Birth of Plastics'.

Here students use the film clips, touch-screen exhibit, text on the red plastic strips and items on display to make notes for their story, using the template on the Front Page News student sheet as a guide. They can also take photos to include in their story if cameras are available.

Front Page News student sheet (pdf)

At the Museum, or back in school, students use their notes to write their own news story. They could search the web for additional images or you can make the following images available to them:

Students could present their story to the class, or if cross-curricular work with ICT can be organised, create a webpage or mock up their story as a newspaper front page.