These videos are excerpts from the We Are Aliens! planetarium show. They provide good starter activities for looking at life within our universe. They explore life within our solar system and the Earth and other planets that may contain life. The exoplanets videos go on to look at the possibilities of life outside...

This resource from the European Space Agency is presented as four highly complex activities for more able and talented students. The activities require students to work with tardigrades ('water bears'), which they gather from collected moss or lichen samples. Students are given some outline guidance to come up...

Published by the Wellcome Trust, the 'Big Picture' explores issues around biology and medicine.

Space biology looks at life in space from several perspectives: how it began, where it might be, and the effects of space as a rather extreme habitat on humans and other life.

Responding to...

These We Are Aliens! related biology activities for the class room have been devised by Chris Carr. The resources includes practical activities and worksheets. Supporting videos demonstrate the activities. The following curriculum areas are covered:

• Cell biology
• Food tests, including starch,...

British ESA astronaut Tim Peake invites UK children to exercise alongside him as he trains two hours a day on the highest and fastest gym in the Universe – travelling at 27,600 km per hour and circling the world every 90 minutes. The triathlon styled challenge encourages schools to create their own ‘spaceathlons...

This resource contains eight projects:

1. Using UV sensitive beads and sun cream to investigate the effects of ultraviolet radiation.

2. The aim of this activity is to encourage the students to come up with their own investigations, to explore how exposure to UV radiation varies in different countries...

In this Catalyst article, students at La Sainte Union Catholic School in North London investigate the link between lichen species and air pollution around their school.

Lichens are indicators of changes in air quality; tolerant species replace those which are sensitive to a given pollutant. This effect is...

This Nuffield Advanced Chemistry Special Study enabled students to see something of the scope of the field of biochemistry, and to appreciate its dependence upon chemical principles The objectives were: *to show the fundamental chemical nature of living processes. *to consider the similarity of the chemical...

This is a Bingo activity from Arkive which can be used outside the classroom. Children are asked to circle living things they see on their sheet whilst on a field trip or nature walk. If they get four in a row they can shout 'Bingo'. This leads to a discussion on where the different species were found which can...

A Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) resource containing information about the biology of spiders. Suitable for teachers who want to know more about spiders, the resource contains information including descriptions of body structure, feeding, mating and spiders' webs. BBSRC is a part of...

In this podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Sue Nelson hears about the birth of an ocean in the Afar depression in the Horn of Africa. The continental crust is being ripped apart at a phenomenal rate – one metre every year over the last five years. In...

A Year 11 module from the Salters’ Key Stage Four double award science course. The context for this module is the use of scientific ideas to explain human performance. Students discuss what is meant by being ‘fit’. They compare different uses of the word 'work' and are...

This podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) looks at how hikers and walkers could be unwittingly changing the landscape by spreading alien species; what it's like to work as a marine biologist in the Arctic in temperatures of minus 40°C; and exactly how...

In this practical activity students stain root tips and examine them for signs of cells dividing by mitosis. Students can either compare two different sources of root tip or two different stains. The mitotic index is the fraction of cells in a microscope field which contain condensed chromosomes. This index can be...

This resource is a compilation of reports by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) and Ofqual reviewing standards over time in science subjects at GCSE and A levels.

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