Learning zone

A set of learning activities mapped to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence is available along with guidance for teachers on using this project to engage with the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Professional Standards for Professional Learning. Learning for Sustainability is core to the Professional Standards and this project offers a great opportunity to put this interdisciplinary learning into practice.

Learning for sustainability is about who we are and the type of communities and world we want to live in. It is about improving the quality of life and wellbeing of all. It is very much about the here and now, the present day, but also about the future

Opening Up Great Learning, Education Scotland

Our learning activities are either standalone activities or use tools on our “Antibiotics under our feet” website (such as our videos and interactive map) and our schools kit box with all of the equipment needed. In addition to five learning activities based around soil sample collection, we have other microbe, DNA sequencing and soil science based activities and resources available for download suitable for both Primary and Secondary level.

We want to encourage learners to begin to think like researchers and to recognise how they are working scientifically and contributing to real-world research. We have developed a short series of “Think like a researcher” activities to complement our soil sample collection activities.

In addition to helping learners with Curriculum for Excellence Benchmarks in Science, Numeracy across Learning, Literacy across Learning and Health and Wellbeing across Learning, we aim to give learners the chance to work like researchers and to interact with scientists working at the University of St Andrews.

Our learning activities are also suitable for use with the National Curriculum (England) at Key Stage 2. Because of the knowledge and cross-curricular skills that learners will develop through participation in our project, our activities are also applicable to the learning schemes of other countries. Please do get in contact if you would like to chat about this.

Curriculum for Excellence and soil sample collection learning activities

Kit boxes can be borrowed from STEM Ambassadors Scotland: email [email protected]