Our COVID-19 Impact Report highlighted the ways in which the pandemic is affecting our members and explored how we can support our membership further. Nearly 30% of members who took part in the survey are currently homeschooling their children in addition to their job, with over half of these indicating that they do not have enough time to homeschool effectively and a quarter saying that they do not have sufficient educational resources.
During these challenging times we want to support our members who are juggling childcare responsibilities and work. We understand that parents are under pressure to provide their children with structure and support to continue their learning at home and have therefore compiled a list of useful resources for parents to use for homeschooling.
These resources highlight useful environmental science themed learning opportunities to keep children engaged with the outside world from home and include a mix of educational videos, worksheets and lesson plans.
These resources are not designed to be used in place of lesson plans provided from schools but can be used to reinforce learning and supplement lessons.
- BBC Bitesize provides daily lessons for primary and secondary school students:
- Key stage 1: Habitats and the Environment;
- Key stage 2: The Living World;
- Key stage 3: Earth and the Environment;
- Key stage 4: Humans and the Environment and Environment.
- STEM Learning provides home learning resources for parents for subjects within science, technology, engineering and mathematics:
- Key stage 1 and 2: this short video on the Water Cycle;
- Key stage 2: pupil workbook on marine welfare and conservation;
- Key stage 3: resource packages for the topics earth and environment and interdependence and ecosystems;
- Key stage 4: resources related to the topic earth and atmosphere.
- Oak National Academy online classroom has been developed in response to the pandemic and provides high quality lessons and resources to support remote learning:
- Key stage 1: lessons on Weather and Seasons;
- Key stage 2: lessons on the Rock cycle and Fossils and Animals;
- Key stage 3: lessons on Ecology and Earth Structure;
- Key stage 4: lessons on Biomes and the Biosphere.
- The Association for Science Education Coronavirus hub has a collection of remote learning lesson plans:
- Key stage 2: Living things and their Habitats lesson plans;
- Key stages 3 & 4: directory of resources for secondary education.
- A number of learned societies have also collated useful learning resources including:
- Royal Geographical Society’s geography at home resources;
- Geological Society’s teaching resources;
- Royal Society’s science at home resources;
- British Ecological Society’s teaching and learning resources;
- Royal Society of Biology’s education during COVID-19 resources.
- Earth School, initiated by UNEP and TED-Ed, provides free, high-quality educational content for students ages 5 - 18, taking them on a 30-day "adventure" through the natural world.
- SEEd signposts to a number of teaching resources for primary and secondary school students for different topics related to the environment and sustainable living.
- Explorify is producing a series of Explorify at home science activities which are designed to be easy for parents to do at home with primary school students.
- ZSL's Zoo School provides animal-themed activities and worksheets for the early years foundation stage and key stages 1 - 4.
- Statwars®: Climate Change Challenge is an annual competition which aims to empower and educate pupils to tackle climate change, by providing a project that delivers meaningful and engaging mathematics, numeracy and data literacy to pupils. They provide home resources to support pupils in taking part.
Why not also play your part in keeping students engaged with STEM during lockdown and sign up for I'm a Scientist Stay at home and answer questions from students and teachers about science and working in STEM. Check out our News Story for more information.
If you have any recommendations for homeschooling resources that you think should be included, or if there are other ways that we can support you with homeschooling during this time, please get in touch.
