A Catalyst article about designing, building and testing a spacecraft. There are thousands of man-made satellites orbiting the Earth. Some are only a few hundred kilometres above the Earth and complete one orbit roughly every 90 minutes. Geostationary satellites are located around 40 000 kilometres from the surface...

This is one of the 18 Background Books published for Stage II of the Nuffield Chemistry Sample Scheme. The books were highly illustrated designed to be attractive. This book describes applications of chemistry to cleaning.

There are three parts to this book:
*Part 1: Soap
This part explains how...

In this resource students are given a quadrilateral with one angle of 60 degrees and varying side lengths- with two of the sides of equal length. The challenge is to calculate the lengths of the diagonals.

Each student worksheet contains a different quadrilateral, but the solutions all have something in...

As the number of cells in a microbial culture increases, turbidity increases. In this experiment students calculate doubling time and growth rate constant using absorbance as the measure of growth. Turbidity is caused by suspended cells in the growth medium scattering light, and may be measured using a colorimeter...

This experiment is a continuation of Determining Doubling Time. Students create a standard curve of absorbance against yeast concentration, and use this to determine the concentration of yeast produced over time.

The standard curve (dry mass, grams per litre) is generated from known concentrations of dried...

This booklet contains a number of case studies of lessons that emphasise working with what students already know and working from concrete ideas to the abstract. Each case study explains the task, contains examples of students’ work and explains how the lesson was followed up.

The function game...

This National Strategies study guide offers tried and tested practical suggestions for teachers to use in the classroom when considering the teaching of How Science Works. A variety of tasks help teachers to focus on developing their own creativity and critical thinking, transferable skills which they can pass on...

In September 2002, eight new General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) courses in vocational subjects were introduced: applied art and design; applied business; engineering; health and social care; ICT; leisure and tourism; manufacturing; and applied science. This report covers the introduction of these...

This collection of resources supports the development of practice in behaviour for learning.

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students reflect on the reasoning they currently use when solving proportion problems, examine proportion problems and appreciate their
multiplicative structure and create their own variants of proportion problems. Proportional reasoning is notoriously difficult...

This booklet, developed for mathematics departments by the National Strategies, is based on materials developed by six working groups as part of QCA’s algebra and geometry project.

The project focused on the place of algebra and geometry in developing concepts and skills in reasoning. The booklet brings out...

Produced by Science & Plants for Schools (SAPS), these activities look at career opportunities in plant biology, as well as useful classroom activities and practical investigations. The range of careers and activities covered include:

The materials in this resource are from the Secondary National Strategy ‘Progressing to Level 6 and beyond in science’ project. They were intended for science teachers who are focusing on developing writing in science – specifically explanations, arguments and descriptions.

These materials consist of general...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students will learn to: use past examination papers creatively, explore, identify, and use pattern and symmetry in algebraic
contexts, investigate whether a particular case can be generalised further, understand the importance of counter-examples, develop the...