This short film, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, features a stunning animation that should be useful for teaching evolution at KS4. You’ll still need to show your students a diagram of the Tree of Life at some point, but this film does a great job of bringing such diagrams to life. You can download a high definition version of the film at the Wellcome Trust’s dedicated “Tree of Life” website where you’ll also find a bunch of other resources to help teach evolution, including worksheets and the transcript of the… Read more The Tree of Life →
I hope to be filming some science demonstration videos over the next few months and I’d like to hear from teachers who would like to have a high quality video of a particular demonstration. My own opinion is that you should, where possible, do demonstrations live in your classrooms. However, there are some demos that are too difficult / expensive / time consuming to do which would be really useful to show students. Also, there are some great demonstrations done by live science performers which might be useful to have… Read more New Free Videos – help wanted →
I love teaching about acids and alkalis at KS3 because there’s quite a bit of fun practical work you can do – making an indicator out of red cabbage is an activity that Year 7 always seem to love. The textbook way of starting this topic is to talk about about acids and alkalis around the house… but this might be far more dramatic / interesting way to introduce the subject: The clip is from Smalltalk Diaries, a series of ten short shows about the lives of minibeasts.
I’ve already blogged about climate change videos but wanted to post this film by Leo Murray separately because it really is in a class of its own. It’s a beautifully animated, thought-provoking film, and one which I think students will enjoy watching. You can find the HD version here. There is some good science in the film, with clear explanations of mechanisms that cause climate change and of how we might reach a “tipping point”. (Leo provides a copy of the script, including references here.) However, it is an unashamedly… Read more Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip →
I imagine every school in the country has got at least one copy of An Inconvenient Truth lying around somewhere, but, in my opinion, there are better free films out there for teachers wanting some kind of video resource to help teach about climate change. An Inconvenient Truth is just too long for use in class and, frankly, just too boring. Al Gore’s film is worthy but dull and really only suitable for use if you’ve not bothered to plan your lesson or if you want to send a particularly… Read more An Inconvenient Truth – Al Gore’s film is not very good. →
This classic film is a work of art that just happens to lend itself quite nicely to a bit of KS4 Physics. “The film starts with a sleeping man at a picnic and every ten seconds, the camera moves ten times further away, measured in meters. When we get to the edge of the known universe, the journey reverses and we get ten times closer with each image. We enter the sleeping man’s hand and go deeper and deeper until we finally reach the level of a quark”. Below is… Read more Powers of 10 / Our Place in the Universe →
No need for further description.
Skin colour matters to our students. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, it’s still something that plays a big role in how they define each other and how they define themselves. I’ve found that my students are fascinated by the brief discussion we have about skin colour when looking at melanin in the P2 unit of the 21st Century Science course. It’s refreshing for them to take a scientific look at the issue and it’s definitely one of the “relevant” bits of the course that actually makes an… Read more The Science of Skin →
This animated film from 1953 is charming. It’s an unashamedly didactic film, but done with wit and style. It contains a lot of material that students are required to learn at GCSE. In may ways, it’s better than some of the more recent films that cover this material and I feel it’s worth showing for the historical content alone (something that is often missing from modern textbook treatments). If your students can get over giggling at the 1950s narration, I think they’ll find this a really interesting and useful film… Read more A is for Atom →