This resource, produced by OPAL (Open Air Laboratories), helps children to recognise and name a variety of common plants and develop an understanding that plants have many uses. It is designed for use outside the classroom when visiting a wildlife area. Children are taken on a plant walk where they find pre-...

These materials, aimed at primary learners, use stories and narrative to explore and understand the environment around us. Designed for use outside the classroom when visiting a wildlife area, they link to the topic areas of plants and animals in the local environment...

From Solar Spark, this practical activity explores the reactions at electrodes in an electrical circuit. A solar cell contains two electrodes. Different reactions happen at each electrode so that electrons can move around the circuit to give an electric current. In this experiment students use filter paper soaked...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). An important part of understanding energy is getting to know the different ways it can be stored and transferred. Finding ways to do this with...

These diagnostic questions and response activities (contained in the zip file) support students in being able to:

• Understand that when a force makes things change it mechanically transfers energy between different energy stores.

• Understand that friction transfers energy...

In Activities for the Classroom, the authors of the ‘Teaching about why things change’ project show how a new approach to the fundamental question 'why do things change?' can be adopted in teaching. They do this with a set of classroom activities which show how the...

Energy and Chemistry is one of the titles in the series of ASE Lab Books that were published in the early 1970s for the Association for Science Education by John Murray. Each title covered one or two topics and brought together the best of the teaching notes and...

Produced by Science & Plants for Schools (SAPS), these materials give a range of suggested activities that investigate enzyme activity in ripening fruit. These include:
• the changes in enzyme activity during ripening and storage
• the activity of the same...

These activities, from the Institute of Physics, look at electrical circuits. They provide a review of previous knowledge and introduce the language needed to cope with the greater depth of learning at post-16 level. Activities include: • a discussion about electrical circuits to reinforce knowledge and highlight...

From the Institute of Physics, these activities present a range of examples involving different types of charge carrier and links the measured current to rates of flow of charge. The activities consist of a series of demonstrations which could be set up before the lesson. These include: • considering different...

From the Institute of Physics, this learning episode shows that charge carriers in good conductors usually move very slowly. It illustrates the derivation and use of the equation I = nAvq.

A range of activities include:
• viewing the movement of permanganate ions in an electric field
•...

From the Institute of Physics, this learning episode provides a quantitative definition for resistance (R = V / I) which reinforces the qualitative notion that more resistance means less current. It looks at Ohm’s law, describing that this is not the same thing as the definition of resistance.

Activities...

Produced by the Institute of Physics, in this practical investigation students measure the current and voltage characteristics for several components and identify ohmic and non-ohmic behaviour. Students determine the V-I characteristics for: • a carbon resistor • semiconductor diode • a filament lamp In addition,...

From the Institute of Physics, this learning episode looks at the resistance of a metal and a semiconductor, giving a microscopic explanation of how resistance can vary with temperature. There is also a brief look at superconductivity and its applications.

LDRs (light dependent resistors) are semiconductor devices. From the Institute of Physics, in this learning episode students investigate the resistance of an LDR at different light intensities. This can be used as a basis to explain how photons liberate free electrons...