Noel Pearson

Rob and I was developing a science curriculum with a team of people from Good to Great Schools, an organisation I founded, and we're based in Cairns.

And we decided to bite the bullet and develop a comprehensive primary science curriculum

because we sensed a huge demand from teachers and schools to have teaching resources available.

Our first aim was to provide these resources for Aboriginal schools that we work with in Cape York Peninsula, and in particular, a school in my hometown of Hopevale.

And along with those four well-known strands that the Australian curriculum covers, biology, chemistry, physics and earth and space science, I wanted an extracurricular activity program that would complement the classroom learning.

And so we develop a natural history club for children to collect and report on specimens to the school community every week.

We have an earth and space astronomy club where we get a telescope opportunity.

a resailer in Cairns to come up and spend a night with the kids and be astounded at the knowledge of our children about what they're seeing in the night sky.

So that's our second activity.

The third activity is one focused on an element.

If you ever go to Hopevale or Cohen in central Cape York, you will see a cabinet in the school, a very handsomely built wooden cabinet.

It's got all of the elements of the periodic table in it.

So these children have this really rich resource that we've got these carpenters to build for us.

with all of the elements of the periodic table.

That is our chemistry activity, where we focus on either, in the case of Hopevale, silica as a mineral that's mined in that community, and we do projects on the economic, social, cultural, and scientific chemical basis of this focus mineral.

So I was then stuck for physics.

What do we do with physics?

And I remembered reading this book by Bodanus, a guy called David Bodanus.

Yes, he lives in London.

Right.