Dear Parent / Guardian,

You may be aware that your child’s school is taking part in BBC’s Terrific Scientific.

This is an exciting science project aimed at 9-11 year olds, encouraging them to take part in a series of accessible mass-participation investigations in schools across the UK.

Investigation 6 –Exercise: How does activity affect me?

The sixth investigation is planned for August/September 2017 and based around the topic of the Human Body and Exercise.

The children will be conducting a scientific investigation to find out what impact taking a short break from the classroom to complete some physical activity has on their mood and cognitive abilities. Anecdotal evidence suggests these breaks boost both concentration and happiness in the pupils, which has led to an increase in interest by governmental agencies across the UK. However, there is minimal scientific evidence for or against these positive effects and this is what we want the children to help investigate. The BBC has partnered with the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling on this investigation. The universities will collect the data the children produce and use it in their current research in this area.

The BBC will also be inviting teachers to add their class results to the online Terrific Scientific map, where you will be able to explore results from schools all over the UK.

The investigation.

The children will use a secure website to answer questions about how happy and how awake they are feeling and complete some attention and memorytasks. These tasks involve pupils pressing buttons in response to arrows, remembering sentences and patterns. They will complete these tasks before and after completing each of three outdoor activities.

The activities are:

  • A bleep test: where the children run in time with bleeps which get progressively faster for as long as they can.
  • A run/walk activity: where the children will be encouraged to run or walk at their own speed for 15 minutes.
  • A control activity: where the children will be taken outside to sit or stand for 15 minutes (ideally sit). This will be used to see if the physical activity or simply going outside has the greater impact on them.

All the activities will take place outside and the children will have to complete all three of the activities in order to complete the investigation. The activities are designed to take place on three different days. The children will not need PE kit to perform any of the activities but they may wish to change in to PE shoes.

This investigation is in line with the curriculum and is designed to develop scientific skills and a more detailed outline can be found on the Terrific Scientific website

This activity has been thoroughly risk assessed by BBC Health & Safety and will be supervised by classroom teachers at all times.

Personal information

This investigation will be collecting some personal information from the children; they will be asked to provide their age, sex, school year, and if they already regularly perform small exercise breaks in school at the start of the investigation.The children will record this information on a secure website provided by the universities. The website will also be used to input how they are feeling and to complete the attention and memory tasks.

The children will access the website via a unique personal ID code that will keep their data anonymous and neither the universities nor the BBC will have access to names or any other identifiable information.

The BBC will only receive information about which activity had the greatest impact on cognitive ability based on a class average and no personal information will be viewable by anyone visiting the BBC Terrific Scientific website. All data will be stored securely in the UK.The universities will publish a report giving the overall findings from the work, but it will not contain any information about individual pupils or schools; it will be based on the overall group results.

Parent/guardian responsibility and consent

If you do not want your child’s data to be collected as part of this investigation, please fill out and return the opt-out form, which is at the bottom of this letter.

If you choose to opt-out, your child will still be able to take part in the activities in the classroom but will not be able to access the web site and no personal information or data from your child will be collected for either the universities or the BBC.

If you are happy for your child to fully take part in this exciting research, you need not reply.

If at any point during this investigation (How does activity affect me?), your child decides that they do not wish to take part in the web based tasks, they should simply tell their teacher and not enter their data in the secure website.

If you have any queries for the University team or would like more information, please go to and see if your question is answered in the FAQ. If your question is not answered please use the contact form and a member of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.

We encourage you and your child to explore the Terrific Scientific website bbc.co.uk/terrificscientific where you will find extension activities for this investigation. We hope that you and your child have an enjoyable experience and are inspired to learn more about science together. We wish your child many hours of challenging fun learning about science with BBC Terrific Scientific.

Best wishes,

On behalf of the BBC Terrific Scientific Team.

Dear Parent / Guardian,

*Please tick those that apply*

□I do notgive my consent for my child’s data to be collected as part of this investigation. I acknowledge that the ‘Terrific Scientific’ Exercise investigation has been fully explained to me.

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