A great deal of space exploration is performed by autonomous craft. They have mapped remote planets and even landed to send surface data back to Earth. Satellites have changed the world of communication, earth observation and, through global positioning systems, everyday navigation. This collection, with...

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, challenges students to explain the phases of the Moon by linking the movement of the Moon around the Earth with our perspective from Earth of light and shadow on the Moon.

The two files are identical, apart from the curriculum links stated in the teachers...

In this activity children take on the role of Earth observation scientists submitting a request for an image they would like for their research. This gives them the opportunity to consider the possibilities of pictures taken from orbit (and the limitations) and to write scientifically for a specific audience. It...

This resource, provided by Anne Watson, Els De Geest and Stephanie Prestage, describes how a group of ten teachers taught low attaining groups in secondary school, and what features were seen to be important. The teachers had a shared commitment to improving the attainment of their lowest attaining students by...

In this activity, children learn that a shooting star or meteor is a piece of rock that lights up as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere. They also work scientifically to investigate how craters are formed when a meteor...

This resource looks at extremes of temperature on the Earth, and inside and outside the International Space Station. Students must find data, draw bar graphs and perform conversions from Fahrenheit to Celsius.

From NASA, these high resolution images show separately the planets of our solar system. Images in this resource include: Sun, Earth, Moon, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and the dwarf planet Pluto.

This revision of the National Curriculum was an attempt to simplify the 1989 version, and to make assessment more manageable.

*The 17 Attainment Targets (AT) were reduced to four – with these divided into ‘strands’.

*Fewer Statements of Attainment: the number was approximately halved by broadening...

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...

From NASA, this image presents the approximate sizes of the planets relative to each other. Outward from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. The planets are not shown at their relative distances from the Sun.

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, explores magnetism and how it is used in a compass. It is aimed at key stage 2, but the activities would also be suitable for introducing magnetism to key stage 3.

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