These materials, from Waste Watch (part of Keep Britain Tidy), have been developed to make explicit links between sustainability and packaging for students following GCSE level design and technology courses. The scheme of learning includes suggested activities for five active learning sessions, supported by the...

This Science upd8 activity offers an opportunity to test students' understanding of the solar system, and their skills as independent enquirers, problem solvers and effective communicators. Students are part of an earth-bound team set the task of interpreting a range of data relating to the solar system/universe....

Students are introduced to 4 different scales of production that they may come across, one-off, batch, mass and continuous through a video clip showing a wide range of products which they need to categorise into a type of production. Details are given on the characteristics of one-off production, and how it can be...

This guide is suitable to support a full introductory wearable-technology project using Arduino. It gives an overview of the Arduino system as well as the key terms surrounding ‘making’ and ‘hacking’. After a brief review of basic electrical theory, a closer look at the inputs and outputs of a basic board, and of...

This resource is an introductory lesson to electronic systems. Its content looks at system diagrams (I.e. circuit diagram, flow charts), open loop systems and closed loop systems. Using the key terms input, process, output and feedback, students are given examples of products and asked to describe the system that...

In this resource, produced by ARKive, students explore the role of the opposable thumb in primates and look at how this adaptation helps many different species in accomplishing tasks essential for survival. A presentation introduces the definition of an opposable thumb and looks at species that have this adaptation...

A case study from Mathematics Matters which looks at the development of optical fibres and how mathematical models have simplified the process of producing them. Modern society relies heavily on a variety of networks, but we don’t fully understand how they behave. Mathematical network theory lets us create models...

In this video, Cathie Wells from the University of Reading talks about how she is helping aircraft conserve fuel which reduces greenhouse gas emissions by making use of high resolution forecasts of three dimensional wind speeds in the atmosphere. In the associated activity, students are asked to calculate the best...

This is a problem solving lesson, designed to help you assess how well students are able to:

• Construct lines of sight for the visibility of a camera
• Find and compare the areas of triangles and quadrilaterals
• Calculate and compare percentages and/or fractions of areas

The...

A podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). With efforts to improve energy efficiency focused on green transport, sustainable power generation, growing your own food and reducing waste, it is often easy to forget that the very buildings we live and work in...

These Cre8ate maths activities develop multi-stage logistical thinking. The Planning ahead puzzle develops process skills of problem solving: working systematically and creating, describing and experimenting with systematic strategies. Making tea is concerned with finding the best way to organise time and draws on...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students learn to interpret decimals and fractions using scales and areas, find equivalent fractions, order and relate fractions and decimals and to reflect on and discuss these processes. Students will have met these concepts before. Many, however, may still have...