In these activities, produced by the European Space Agency, students work in groups to create timelines: first, one of their own lives and then one of the main events in the history of the Universe. The activity guides students to calculate the events in the history of the Universe to a scale of one year. Students...

Origami squares are shown with different colours on each side of the paper. Two folds are made and then a hole is punched through all of the layers. The challenge is to determine where the holes appear when the squares of paper are unfolded. This resource is suitable for Key Stage 3 and could be used as an...

The family tree for honeybees is given together with rules for reproduction. The challenge begins with identification of male and female bees in a diagram. Further rows are then added and the information collected in a table. There is an extension to then find the number of bees in other generations without drawing...

In this Bowland assessment task, students consider two different methods for converting temperatures from degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit. Students have to select a way of comparing the two methods, explore the effects of varying temperature, make accurate calculations and devise a method of deciding when the...

Act 1

A giant cup is being used as part of a world record...

This task is designed to assess how well students understand using approximations for temperature conversions, and assessing their accuracy.

The following methods are given for converting from degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit:

Method 1: multiply the Celsius...

There are two versions of this house prices activity. Both involve large data sets of house prices showing how they have changed in different locations over long and short periods of time. In Version A, students draw and interpret statistical diagrams and calculate statistical measures by hand. In Version B,...

A section of a regular polygon is shown with diagonals drawn from a hidden vertex. The angle between two diagonals their corresponding sides are given. The challenge is to work out how many...

This resource uses height data from the pilot of CensusAtSchool to encourage Key Stage Three and Key Stage Four students to investigate growth. They are asked to draw conclusions using both calculations and graphs and also consider other factors affecting growth. Students develop skills in interpreting tables,...

In this activity, students explore the miss-match between real and perceived risk by exploring the risks of dying unexpectedly from various causes. Starting from known fears and comparing them with real-life data, students can recognise that these fears are often unfounded. Students have the opportunity to learn...

Human beings are pretty smart. We have transformed the world and thought up some wondrous inventions. But what will the future hold for planet Earth and the people who inhabit it? Can we use new technology and innovations to improve the quality of our lives as well as the world we live in?