This resource contains four instant maths ideas, ideal for use as starter activities, extension work or as probing questions to assess understanding. The activities provide students with the opportunity to photograph and consider the plans of unusual objects, create plans and elevation drawings of solids made from...

The growth of plants in space is a keen area of experimentation, including ongoing work aboard the International Space Station. Successful crops will help astronauts to spend longer in space, boosting their healthy diet while reducing the mass of prepared food that must be transported from Earth.

Using a...

A selection of images relating to plants and food.

This topic, from the Association for Science Education, explores the importance of plants. The topic allows classes in schools across the world to exchange information about plants grown locally, the value of these plants and how they are used.

After exchanging their findings and views with students in other...

This resource contains a series of lessons which are designed to extend students’ knowledge and understanding of plastics and plastic waste on a global scale. Linking to materials and their properties, the environment, recycling and design and technology, they contain investigations and activities aimed at both...

Produced by Solar Spark, this activity allows students to make their own plastic from vinegar and milk. Milk contains casein in a form that is soluble in water. Making the milk acidic by adding vinegar makes the casein insoluble so the milk separates into a solid and a liquid known as curds and whey. Removing the...

This activity from Cre8ate maths involves students in designing a playground. They will have to decide upon a suitable outdoor space and consider key features relevant to their design. Scaled templates can be used to trial several layouts giving consideration to safety...

This resource asks students to consider the properties of 'number cubes' - or dice. There are three questions to investigate, including rearranging the dots so that the difference between opposite sides is always constant. The extension ask students to consider different kinds of dice and an invitation to think of...

This resource bank consists of 16 activities exploring and investigating polygons. The activities include:

• The 'make a polygon' game for two players
• Making polygons using a pinboard
• Investigating the number of diagonals in a polygon
• Exploring the shapes and tessellation...

This resource contains 21 instant maths ideas designed to explore the properties of polygons. Practical activities include creating polygons by folding newspaper, exploring the number of triangles that can be drawn on a triangular dotted grid and creating, naming and classifying quadrilaterals. Students are asked...

In this activity, students create a pop rocket by combining a film canister, antacid tablet and water. 

Portia works with other scientists and engineers to work on systems that will go into space.  She explains how she is working on a project to build a robotic arm to work on samples from Mars.  Portia studied Physics and then Space Engineering at university. 

There are two cuts of the video – one aimed at...

This excel file deals with the four operations on positive and negative numbers giving practice at a variety of calculations.

The first interactive sheet shows a table with -5 to 5 both along the top and down the side...

Power for Young Mathematicians was first published in March 1988 as a submission by MESU (The Micro-Electronics Support Unit) to the National Curriculum Mathematics Working Party.

At the time of publication, computers were relatively new to many schools and there was much debate about how they could be used...

This SMILE resource contains two packs of games, investigations, worksheets and practical activities supporting the teaching and learning of powers and roots, from identifying square numbers to investigating numbers expressed as powers.

Powers and roots pack one contains twelve work cards...