BBC News Stories + Resources for the ClassroomEach weekday, watch the BBC news story of the day and take the challenge!
Beekeeper Nick was confused when his bees kept dying off. He kept his hives being stocked with food, so why did he still lose around 75% of the colony? The answer was in what was (or wasn’t) in his bees’ food.
In the wild, bees take what they need from flowers to make honey, and then feed off this honey in the winter. When we take this honey for ourselves, beekeepers replace it with supplementary food in the form of sugar and water, and scientists now say that bees can’t subsist off of just sugar and water, as the simple combination was missing key nutrients. Your parents probably said the same thing about why you can’t just have cake for dinner!
After years of testing different foods for bees, scientists have finally discovered how to make the core ingredient, called “sterole.” Oxford scientists have been developing the best foods for bees, and have found that the bees who consumed the food with sterole were healthier, and had up to 15 times more baby bees! This breakthrough is incredibly important — it means bees can still thrive without floral pollen, which would also help our food security, since bees are so important for pollinating crops.
Being an astronaut is no joke — for your brain and your body to be prepared, you need to train, not unlike sports or school. Want to train for a soccer match? You may need to go for runs or lift weights. Need to prepare for a math test? You may need to repeat your times tables. Going into space soon? You may need to put on a space suit and get strapped into a full-sized replica of the International Space Station, then submerged in a 12-meter (40-foot!) deep pool for six hours. At least, that’s what astronaut Rosemary Coogan did to make sure she was ready for her spacewalk.
Coogan was chosen from 22,000 applicants to become a European Space Agency astronaut and may be the first Englishwoman to set foot on the moon.
Space preparation is daunting, but she had teams of supporters like divers and control room workers to make sure she was safe. The spacewalk test is meant to make sure that Rosemary could survive the conditions off of earth, even when things don’t go according to plan.
Did you know we’re still finding new dinosaurs?! You’d think the 66 million years they’ve been extinct would have been enough time for research, but the Natural History Museum is getting ready to welcome yet another new addition — a small dinosaur that they had previously mistaken for a Nanosaurus. It’s a two-legged, herbivorous dinosaur with big feet and a long tail, about the height of a labrador. Scientists have renamed it “Enigmacursor,” which means “puzzling runner,” and would also be a very cool name for the next Nike sneaker.
To determine if a dinosaur (or any creature) is new, researchers try to find unique features, like parts, proportions, and shapes. The Enigmacursor will be displayed at the Natural History Museum and will be an important tool for learning how its bigger relatives evolved, since dinosaurs started their evolution as small animals and became much, much bigger over a long, long time.
What happens when you mix theatre with soccer, or football as they call in the UK? You get a play that turns women’s soccer into a live story of grit, pressure, and ambition — no stadium required. This new production brings the energy of the game to the stage, spotlighting the real experiences of female athletes in sport.
The story doesn’t shy away from reality. Women footballers around the world have faced uneven playing conditions, from ill-fitting men’s kits to poorly maintained pitches and training setups that simply weren’t built with them in mind. Even small things — like long walks between facilities or limited access to resources — add up and shape the experience of being a professional athlete.
What makes the play feel especially authentic is the lead actor, who actually played semi-pro football before moving into acting. That real-life experience gives the performance extra edge, blending sport and storytelling in a way that feels lived-in, not just acted.
At its core, the production is about more than football. It’s about visibility, opportunity, and challenging the idea of who gets to have a future in sport — and who gets to be seen on stage telling that story.
Mars may be cold and barren, but it might have supported life! At least, that’s what scientists think, after finding rocks with some very interesting spots. These markings, nicknamed “leopard spots” and “poppyseeds,” are minerals that could have been made by Martian microbes, early in the planet’s history. They were discovered by the Perseverance Rover, which has been exploring Mars since its 2021 landing.
The rover has been focused on Mars’s Jezero Crater, which used to be a huge lake with a river running into it before drying up billions of years ago. Now, Perseverance collects samples to analyze in its onboard lab! Car Bluetooth is cool but c’mon, it’s no analysis lab…
These rocks aren’t exactly the video diary of an alien’s day in the life on Mars, but they could be the clearest sign of life ever found on Mars, which is thought to be one of the most promising places in our Solar System to look for life outside of Earth. The only way to confirm if the minerals were made by microbes is to get them back to Earth, so NASA and the European Space Agency have proposed a mission to collect them. It’ll be expensive, but this could be the answer to if there was life on other planets!
News: Science + Nature
In Churchill, Manitoba — often called the “polar bear capital of the world” — polar bears are facing a changing home. As the Arctic warms, sea ice is forming later and melting earlier. That’s a big problem, because polar bears rely on the ice like a hunting platform to catch seals.
Now, they’re stuck on land for longer periods, waiting for the ice to return. And while they wait, hunger builds. Some bears are wandering closer to towns in search of food, digging through garbage and sometimes coming into conflict with people.
Scientists say the situation is serious: polar bear populations in some areas have dropped sharply in the last generation. As the ice keeps shrinking, the challenge of sharing space between humans and polar bears is only getting harder.
Ever think you would celebrate the return of a dog-sized rodent?! You might, if those rodents were the beavers making their way to the wetlands in Shropshire. Until recently, the area had spent its last 400 years beaver-less, after hunters depleted the beaver population for fur, meat, and scent glands.
Now, the county is excited to welcome a pair of beavers that was transported all the way from Scotland — that’s 300 miles! But why go through all of this trouble just to bring beavers back? Beavers’ list of strengths include helping to control water, creating new habitats for other creatures, managing willow tree scrub that’s drying out the surroundings, and being pretty darn cute.
Scientists are exploring an interesting idea: what if we could replace regular plastic with something made from seaweed?
Unlike traditional plastic — which is made from fossil fuels and can take hundreds of years to break down — seaweed-based plastic is designed to decompose naturally over time. That means it could help reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in oceans and landfills.
But there are still challenges. Right now, seaweed plastic is expensive to produce — somewhere between two and 10 times more costly than plastic. Scientists are also working on how to grow more seaweed efficiently and make sure large-scale farming doesn’t harm ocean ecosystems.
So while seaweed plastic isn’t widely used yet, it’s a promising idea that could help tackle one of the world’s biggest pollution problems.
Scientists use a revolutionary technique to better study the DNA of bones from burial sites over a thousand years old. Highlighting gradual changes in the DNA is unlocking Britain’s history, providing information on human migration and the interaction between different populations from the Romans to the Anglo-Saxons. This video is excerpted from BBC News.
You’ve probably never thought about combining math and art class, but maybe now, you will! This teacher shares his new approach to math, where he uses colors to represent different numbers.
He assigned 10 numbers to 10 different colors — zero is white, one is black, two is red, and so on. That means combinations of numbers become combinations of colors. The result is an equation that’s educational and pretty at the same time!
What starts as multiplication or patterns quickly begins to look more like art class than math class. But behind the colors is real number sense, memory tricks, and a whole new way of thinking about equations. Turns out math might be a lot more visual — and creative — than most people realize.
In Churchill, Manitoba — often called the “polar bear capital of the world” — polar bears are facing a changing home. As the Arctic warms, sea ice is forming later and melting earlier. That’s a big problem, because polar bears rely on the ice like a hunting platform to catch seals.
Now, they’re stuck on land for longer periods, waiting for the ice to return. And while they wait, hunger builds. Some bears are wandering closer to towns in search of food, digging through garbage and sometimes coming into conflict with people.
Scientists say the situation is serious: polar bear populations in some areas have dropped sharply in the last generation. As the ice keeps shrinking, the challenge of sharing space between humans and polar bears is only getting harder.
Ever think you would celebrate the return of a dog-sized rodent?! You might, if those rodents were the beavers making their way to the wetlands in Shropshire. Until recently, the area had spent its last 400 years beaver-less, after hunters depleted the beaver population for fur, meat, and scent glands.
Now, the county is excited to welcome a pair of beavers that was transported all the way from Scotland — that’s 300 miles! But why go through all of this trouble just to bring beavers back? Beavers’ list of strengths include helping to control water, creating new habitats for other creatures, managing willow tree scrub that’s drying out the surroundings, and being pretty darn cute.
Scientists are exploring an interesting idea: what if we could replace regular plastic with something made from seaweed?
Unlike traditional plastic — which is made from fossil fuels and can take hundreds of years to break down — seaweed-based plastic is designed to decompose naturally over time. That means it could help reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in oceans and landfills.
But there are still challenges. Right now, seaweed plastic is expensive to produce — somewhere between two and 10 times more costly than plastic. Scientists are also working on how to grow more seaweed efficiently and make sure large-scale farming doesn’t harm ocean ecosystems.
So while seaweed plastic isn’t widely used yet, it’s a promising idea that could help tackle one of the world’s biggest pollution problems.
Scientists use a revolutionary technique to better study the DNA of bones from burial sites over a thousand years old. Highlighting gradual changes in the DNA is unlocking Britain’s history, providing information on human migration and the interaction between different populations from the Romans to the Anglo-Saxons. This video is excerpted from BBC News.
You’ve probably never thought about combining math and art class, but maybe now, you will! This teacher shares his new approach to math, where he uses colors to represent different numbers.
He assigned 10 numbers to 10 different colors — zero is white, one is black, two is red, and so on. That means combinations of numbers become combinations of colors. The result is an equation that’s educational and pretty at the same time!
What starts as multiplication or patterns quickly begins to look more like art class than math class. But behind the colors is real number sense, memory tricks, and a whole new way of thinking about equations. Turns out math might be a lot more visual — and creative — than most people realize.
Latest News
At the Weald & Downland Living Museum, a group of volunteers has stepped straight into the year 1461 — and they’re sticking to it. That means no electricity, no central heating, no phones, and no modern conveniences.
They’re living, working, eating, and sleeping the medieval way: cooking over open fires, coping with cold and damp conditions, and adjusting to just two simple meals a day (including a lot of porridge). There’s no caffeine, no snacks, and definitely no scrolling.
It’s a tough experiment in historical living — but one surprising takeaway so far? They don’t miss their phones as much as they expected.
What if school started so early that your brain felt like it was the middle of the night? For a lot of teens, that’s actually what’s happening.
One school decided to take the science seriously. Researchers have found that during adolescence, your body clock shifts later — meaning you naturally fall asleep later and wake up later. So when teens are forced to get up at 7 a.m., it’s not just “early”… it’s the biological equivalent of an adult waking up at 4:30 a.m. Imagine trying to learn, focus, and take tests at that hour every single day.
Instead of ignoring this, the school changed its start time to better match how teenage brains actually work. The goal? Help students get enough sleep, feel more awake in class, and stop the cycle of constant exhaustion.
It raises a big question: if we know teens’ brains are wired this way, should more schools rethink their schedules too?
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, researchers tried a simple but revealing experiment: they “lost” ten wallets around the city to see how people would respond. Each wallet had a little cash inside and a card showing how to return it to the owner.
Why does this matter? Scientists who study happiness say that how much people trust strangers — and how often strangers act kindly — is a big clue to how happy a place is overall. It turns out that things like strong communities, helping others, and even sharing meals can matter almost as much as money or jobs when it comes to well-being.
So the real question isn’t just how many wallets were returned — it’s what those choices say about how people treat each other, and how that shapes everyday happiness.
In the hills of Scotland, a real steam train called the Jacobite has become famous around the world because it looks like the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter. Every day, fans travel to Glenfinnan just to watch it pass and imagine they’re on their way to Hogwarts — no magical brick wall required.
But all that excitement comes with a downside. The huge number of visitors means busy roads, packed parking areas, and lots of traffic in the small nearby village. It can even make walking around more difficult and less safe, since people often have to park far away and walk along roads with cars passing by.
Now the local community is trying to find solutions, including building more parking spaces, to help manage the crowds while still letting fans enjoy the magical experience.
For many people, a dog or cat is much more than a pet — they’re part of the family. Some owners see their pets like a son, daughter, or best friend. But under the law in many places, pets are still treated as property, more like a car or a piece of furniture than a family member.
That legal label can create big problems when families split up. In divorces or ownership disputes, courts may focus on who bought the pet or whose name is on paperwork, instead of what is best for the animal or which person has the strongest bond with it.
Now some people are pushing to change that. A petition to the UK Parliament argues that pets should be legally recognized as family members. Spain has already made similar changes, allowing courts to consider the pet’s welfare and emotional relationships when making decisions.
The debate raises a bigger question: if millions of people treat pets like family, should the law do the same?
At the Weald & Downland Living Museum, a group of volunteers has stepped straight into the year 1461 — and they’re sticking to it. That means no electricity, no central heating, no phones, and no modern conveniences.
They’re living, working, eating, and sleeping the medieval way: cooking over open fires, coping with cold and damp conditions, and adjusting to just two simple meals a day (including a lot of porridge). There’s no caffeine, no snacks, and definitely no scrolling.
It’s a tough experiment in historical living — but one surprising takeaway so far? They don’t miss their phones as much as they expected.
What if school started so early that your brain felt like it was the middle of the night? For a lot of teens, that’s actually what’s happening.
One school decided to take the science seriously. Researchers have found that during adolescence, your body clock shifts later — meaning you naturally fall asleep later and wake up later. So when teens are forced to get up at 7 a.m., it’s not just “early”… it’s the biological equivalent of an adult waking up at 4:30 a.m. Imagine trying to learn, focus, and take tests at that hour every single day.
Instead of ignoring this, the school changed its start time to better match how teenage brains actually work. The goal? Help students get enough sleep, feel more awake in class, and stop the cycle of constant exhaustion.
It raises a big question: if we know teens’ brains are wired this way, should more schools rethink their schedules too?
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, researchers tried a simple but revealing experiment: they “lost” ten wallets around the city to see how people would respond. Each wallet had a little cash inside and a card showing how to return it to the owner.
Why does this matter? Scientists who study happiness say that how much people trust strangers — and how often strangers act kindly — is a big clue to how happy a place is overall. It turns out that things like strong communities, helping others, and even sharing meals can matter almost as much as money or jobs when it comes to well-being.
So the real question isn’t just how many wallets were returned — it’s what those choices say about how people treat each other, and how that shapes everyday happiness.
In the hills of Scotland, a real steam train called the Jacobite has become famous around the world because it looks like the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter. Every day, fans travel to Glenfinnan just to watch it pass and imagine they’re on their way to Hogwarts — no magical brick wall required.
But all that excitement comes with a downside. The huge number of visitors means busy roads, packed parking areas, and lots of traffic in the small nearby village. It can even make walking around more difficult and less safe, since people often have to park far away and walk along roads with cars passing by.
Now the local community is trying to find solutions, including building more parking spaces, to help manage the crowds while still letting fans enjoy the magical experience.
For many people, a dog or cat is much more than a pet — they’re part of the family. Some owners see their pets like a son, daughter, or best friend. But under the law in many places, pets are still treated as property, more like a car or a piece of furniture than a family member.
That legal label can create big problems when families split up. In divorces or ownership disputes, courts may focus on who bought the pet or whose name is on paperwork, instead of what is best for the animal or which person has the strongest bond with it.
Now some people are pushing to change that. A petition to the UK Parliament argues that pets should be legally recognized as family members. Spain has already made similar changes, allowing courts to consider the pet’s welfare and emotional relationships when making decisions.
The debate raises a bigger question: if millions of people treat pets like family, should the law do the same?
Teaching With the News
To help your students dive deeper into news content, we created this bundle of news story response worksheets. We designed these worksheets to be used with any of our news videos and to keep students focused as they watch and enhance comprehension and retention. (Please note that some worksheet types are better fits for certain content and grade levels). Assign students the same one, mix them up, or let them choose!
Extra, extra! Read all about it! Introduce your students to the characteristics, roles, and purpose of the news. In this lesson, they’ll learn the different categories of news and what makes an event “newsworthy.”
News is happening all the time, everywhere. So how do journalists choose what to share? Introduce your students to the processes involved in gathering the news they consume every day. In this lesson, they’ll learn the importance of curiosity in shaping news.
“Fake news” gets thrown around a lot, but what’s actually required of journalists in terms of accuracy? Introduce your students to the ways journalists are expected to verify information. In this lesson, they’ll learn how to distinguish facts from rumors or opinions