This resource focusses on making a balloon powered car to learn about forces. Presenting pupils with the question, 'How do things move?' pupils explore aeroplanes and cars, learning about ‘thrust’. Through designing their own balloon-powered car, children will explore how they can increase and decrease thrust,...

A balloon provides a simple example of how a rocket engine works. The air trapped inside the balloon pushes out the open end, causing the balloon to move forward. The force of the air escaping is the “action”; the movement of the balloon forward is the “reaction” predicted by Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

This STEM activity works to develop pupils understanding of how vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear. In this purposeful challenge, pupils will investigate how a balloon can be used as a simple speaker to amplify sound, by blowing up the balloon and listening to how a range of sounds travel...

This play allows children to explore biodiversity through movement and music in a fun and engaging way.  It looks at how consumer demand drives the growing of a particular type of rice in India and the consequences if a disease or pest affects the growth of rice crops.

Great for use in an assembly or in...

In this resource, students use their STEM skills to help them design and build a model of a flood- proof house. Activities to help them with their design include testing materials (for strength and absorbency) and structures. Set on a fictitious island coping with the devastating effects of flooding caused by...

Becta was the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology in education. It was established in 1997 and closed in March 2011. Becta provided leadership to embed the effective use of technology and provided rigorous research to evaluate the impact of...

This KS2 resource looks at the importance of bees as pollinators and explores some of the threats they face. The activities are based around the work of ‘real world’ scientists in organisations such as Fera.

Activities include:

Pollination roleplay...

This play looks at how an increase in the demand for meat can affect tropical rainforests far away. It explores some of the consequences for; animals and plants living in these areas, farmers and our planet.  

Great for use in an assembly or in class, when learning about rainforests, healthy eating and...

This report from Ofsted looks at low level classroom disruption. Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI) raised concerns about low-level disruption in schools in his Annual Report 2012/13. As a consequence, guidance to inspectors was tightened to place greater emphasis on this issue in routine inspections. In addition...

This document, published by SCORE (Science Community Representing Education), provides guidance to primary schools on the resources needed to carry out practical work, to ensure that all children receive a well-rounded science education. The benchmarks show the levels of resourcing that SCORE considers necessary to...

This short animation film joins Bepi, as she prepares to embark on a space mission to Mercury. Bepi explores a range of scientific facts and gets pupils thinking about all the things we don’t know about mercury. This video would be well placed at the start of a lesson researching a planet like Mercury. This video...

The best teaching draws on the best evidence. 

Amid increasing calls for evidence-based practice in classrooms, teachers’ lives are usually too busy for them to comprehensively access and implement the best evidence we can find emerging from education research.

Best Evidence Science Teaching for...

The Beyond 2000 report was the outcome of a seminar series initiated by Rosalind Driver and Jonathan Osborne at King’s College London. The series was funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation. There were four closed seminars and two open seminars. The report was edited by Robin Millar and Jonathan...

Looking to discuss the big, contestable questions in STEM? This collection of resources from The Economist Educational Foundation supports students to understand how the scientific and technological processes of the modern world are intertwined with political decisions and ethical calculations. They help develop...