The week beginning 3rd March is a busy week. Not only is it National Careers Week, but we also have World Wildlife Day on 3rd March and World Engineering Day on 4th March – all relevant to STEM educators. The week ends with World Book Day on 7th March.
Don’t forget the following week is British Science Week - see the STEM Community Live Q&A recording here which talks about how to incorporate BSW into your lessons https://community.stem.org.uk/browse/scl-od
Whilst its unlikely that you will celebrate each one of these events in your science lessons, STEM Learning’s resource collection makes it really easy for you to find resources if you decide to join in the celebrations. I often find resources for awareness days can be great to add to our schemes of work, even if we don’t use them at the time they were created for – so it’s worth a look even if you’re not planning on joining in on the day.
I’ve already posted about the National Careers week videos (see https://community.stem.org.uk/blogs/linda-crouch/2025/02/17/national-careers-week) and I’ve also found some great careers videos here that you may wish to use https://www.ukri.org/news-and-events/101-jobs-that-change-the-world/.
For World Wildlife Day, these are some of my top picks for free Biology resources that will complement your curriculum. There are many many more – please do set some time aside to look through them using this link https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/collection/508590/world-wildlife-day-3rd-march
What to conserve? Is a great resource from the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) Citizen Science project, where students have to decide which habitat will be designated as a SSSI https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/elibrary/resource/32678/what-conserve
Wildscreen ARKive (formerly ARKive) has some great resources such as Guess Zoo, biodiversity hospital and many many others. Biology teachers – try to find an hour or so to have a look through what is available that you can use in your lessons. Sexual selection: The Dating Game is likely to appeal to your students! https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/collection/2777/wildscreen-ark-arkive-age-11-14
Identification sheets for invertebrates and birds can be found here – useful for any field work that you are planning – ask your technicians to print and laminate to have handy for when you’re going out https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/collection/417951/wildlife-watch-suitable-home-learning
Looking further ahead – International Maths Day is on March 14th – an opportunity to promote the maths in science with your GCSE groups. Don’t worry if you miss this because your focus is British Science Week, you could instead celebrate National Numeracy Day 22nd May. April has a few awareness days of note to STEM educators too – World Health Day is 7th April, International Day of Human Space Flight is the 12th and World Quantum Day is the 14th. Sadly these dates are likely to fall during the Easter holidays, but perhaps we can set a relevant homework task for years 7 to 10?