1. Final Script
(News Jingle)
Tom: Hello, I’m Tom Saunders and this is your 8am morning news. In today’s bulletin: Is
Oldham’s High street surviving the hard hit by the recession? (Sound Bite) How is Oldham Sixth
forms science centre inspiring primary school students? (Sound Bite) And we find out how you
can excel at university.
(Sound Bite)
Tom: Oldham’s town centre has recently seen many shop closures including Thomas Cook who
released a statement saying it was due to administration costs.However other high-street stores
are still thriving in this economic depression, withfirmly established high street businesses like
Phones4u still managing to stay afloat despite this being the second recession the company has
been through. We sent our economic correspondent Abbie Ross to find out.
Abbie: I spoke to the director of E-commerce and telesales development at Phones4u, Jonathon
Ross to find out…
(Interview)
Abbie: What is the secret to the company’s success?
Jonathon: To always listen to the customer and try to innovate the company, urm, reacting to
the customer’s comments, always having new products. Urm, being in the marker of mobile
phones we have a constant stream of products that are very desirable coming through all the
time and the only thing we can change to differentiate ourselves from other companies is to try
and improve the customers experience and increase customer attention and transaction.
Abbie: How is the company coping with the recession?
Jonathon: We’ve been very lucky throughout the recession because we, we do sell probably the
number one most desirable on the market today. Urm, everyone has a mobile phone, everyone
constantly wants a new mobile phone, urm, the companies like Samsung, LG, HTC and Apple are
constantly innovating and it’s now a cycle where new models are brought out every year and it’s
the must have gadget, it may not last for ever but at the moment we are very lucky to be in that
position.
Tom: Oldham Sixth Form College has been inspiring primary school students to take up an
interest in science through the establishments of the regional science centre.Local primary
schools have recently been invited to the college to attend an event there, the theme being the
universe. The children, coming from four different schools in the Oldham area, have participated
in activities that show how the height a meteorite affects the size of the crater formed when it
lands.This has given the children a kick-start towards the science lessons that they will
participate in at Secondary School, giving them a keen interest in physics. We sent our reporter
Emma Kershaw to Oldham Sixth Forms Science Centre to investigate.
Emma: Hello, I’m here outside the science building about to speak to Gemma Nuttall, the schools
Co-ordinator. I wanted to know…

2. (Interview)
Emma: What do you do to make the kids interested?
Gemma: So we do a lot of hands on activities with the children, a lot of particle work and we try
and link whatever we do to experiences that the children have had. So for an example with the
young children when you do melting and freezing and conductors and insulators, we do the
snowman’s coat. So we read the story of the snowman with the children and then get them to
predict whether the ice-cube will melt quicker with a coat and usually the children think it melts
quicker with, because they think you put a coat on to stay warm. But they don’t realise that it’s
an insulator as well, so we do a lot with them because children are more likely to remember
things that they’ve physically done and that link to their past experiences rather than just
listening to listening to a teacher talking.
Emma: How will it help them in the future?
Gemma: It gives them a basis of science knowledge in Primary School that they can then take
into Secondary School that they can then take onto Secondary School so they’re already at an
advantage when they’re at Secondary School compared to children who’ve perhaps not done
very much science in Primary School and then hopefully it captures their interest at an early age
so that they want to continue studying science rather than it being a brand new thing when they
get to secondary school.
Emma: How do the children react to it?
Gemma: The children react really positively to the experiments, there’s always lots of laughing
in lessons and giggling with the experiments and they enjoy being able to test things out for
themselves even things that as older people or adults find really simple, children find really
exciting and when you ask the children at the end what their favourite part of the lessons are
they all say the practical.
Emma: What do they do in the sessions?
Gemma: They normally cover things that are in the primary national curriculum which are
things like electricity, forces, reversible and irreversible changes and plants and growing so we
have different experiments for different topics so for forces we do a lot of stretching materials
so we might stretch strings, elastic bands, strawberry laces and they can compare which ones
stretch the most and that can lead into a graph for older children we do melting and freezing in
reversible and irreversible changes and we blow up balloons with vinegar and bicarbonate of
soda as well because that’s an irreversible change, um and we also do one off experiments that
are just nice for the children to be able to do so things like chromatography where they can
separate the colours in their felt pens.
Emma: How in depth do you teach the science?
Gemma: It depends on the age and ability of the children, so for younger children you keep it
quite simple for infant children, for key stage two children you go into quite a ability of depth
especially with more confident children, urm, so by the time you get to year six with forces most
children have gone beyond push and pull by then and you can talk about air resistance and
gravity as well as your more simple forces.

3. Tom: And finally, former students in the borough are excelling in their university work and
winning awards for being top of their class. We asked local student what they would like to be
doing in the future.
(Vox Pops)
Ben: Urm, I want to like travel pretty much all around the world and just sort of make money as I’m
travelling.
Nichola: Urm, I haven’t decided yet I think I’m going to Uni after college, urm and maybe a gap year.
Katie: Urm, no idea yet.
Iram: Urm, hopefully going to University to study French.
Tom: And that was your 8AMnews, join us at 9 for more updates.