Produced by the Citizen Science project, this teacher guidance summarises ideas on how to run successful discussions and debates within the secondary classroom. Examples illustrate how a range of techniques, such as TV chat show formats, can be used successfully.

These materials will help teachers to:...

Although no humans have been to Mars, we have sent lots of spacecraft and rovers to explore this distant world.  In this resource, students will design their own rover and answer the question “Which would be better to explore Mars, humans or robots?”

The accompanying video clip focuses on human missions to...

In this resource, students use real data to explore the conditions on Mars, and use their knowledge of the red planet to answer the question “Should humans or robots explore Mars in the future?”

The resource contains two activities:

• Conditions on Mars - students use real data and their...

These images, from NASA, show crafts that have been used in the surface exploration of Mars. They illustrate space exploration including the Mars Viking lander which looked for signs of life on Mars.

The many applications of mechanics make it an important topic of interest to applied mathematicians, scientists and engineers. This resource, produced by the Centre for Teaching Mathematics at the University of Plymouth, is designed to provide a more realistic view of mechanics and help the teaching of mechanics...

From the Institute of Physics, this pack of activities aims to encourage teachers to work together in providing a consistent approach to careers advice and guidance. It will also help teachers to build on their own knowledge of physics-based careers and, in turn, help...

This resource, produced by the Centre for Teaching Mathematics at the University of Plymouth, is designed to provide short problems to stimulate discussion of mathematics amongst A level students and between students and their teachers; and to provide some longer investigations which search more deeply into the...

In this activity, students examine changes to forests in cross-border regions of Africa and Borneo using Google Earth Pro to help identify features shown in satellite images and make measurements. The context allows students to explore the factors which put pressure on forested areas, and what is being done to...

A Catalyst article following the journey of the space probes Huygens and Cassini, sent to explore Titan, a moon of Saturn. After a seven year journey Huygens was set to fall through the atmosphere transmitting data back to Earth via Cassini so more can be learnt about this distant moon. The article describes the...

In the early 1990’s The Centre for Teaching Mathematics at the University of Plymouth published a series of books – the 'Exploring...' series.

The books covered pure mathematics, mechanics and statistics, providing a bank of problems and investigations which challenge students to think more deeply about...

This resource, produced by the Centre for Teaching Mathematics at the University of Plymouth, is designed to provide a series of short problems to stimulate discussion of statistics amongst students and between students and teachers; and to provide some longer investigations which search more deeply into the...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students explore trigonometrical graphs by recognising translations, stretches and reflections from their equations, sketching the graphs and learning about the period and amplitude. Students should be familiar with the graphs of y = sin x and y = cos x and have...

Published by the Wellcome Trust in September 2011, this report aimed to find a deeper understanding of young people’s attitudes to science education, particularly regarding the value young people place on science education (for themselves as individuals and for society in general), as well as the key factors...

This computing activity introduces pupils to algorithms, gives them the opportunity to programme bee-bots and to use an internet search engine to find information, pictures and sounds. Pupils will build on their Year 1 computing knowledge throughout the activity and are able to work as part of a small team. This...

This activity, from Shirley Fall, contains ten linked problems which are intended to lead to students developing a rule for integrating functions of the form y=ax n where n not equal to -1. Problem 1 begins by exploring the area enclosed under a straight line y=2x+3 from x=0 to x=a for varying values of a, leading...