The Maya built one of the world's most remarkable civilizations, creating impressive cities, studying the stars, and developing advanced systems of mathematics and writing. Explore the achievements and legacy of the Maya people. Watch the BBC videos below, then take the Kahoot to test your knowledge.
Discover how Maya societies flourished across parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Learn about their temples, calendars, scientific knowledge, and cultural traditions, while exploring how Maya communities continue to live and celebrate their heritage today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a starter activity for lessons on ancient civilizations, geography, or cultural heritage. Follow with the Kahoot as a formative assessment or review activity. Students will examine Maya achievements in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and writing, while learning about the lasting influence of Maya culture. The activity supports comparisons between civilizations and encourages discussion about how ancient knowledge continues to shape the modern world. Watch for misconceptions such as the belief that the Maya disappeared, as millions of Maya people still live throughout Mesoamerica today.
Bring BBC’s Evolution into your classroom with a flexible teaching guide designed to help students investigate how life changes over time. Built around five episodes featuring the elephant, ostrich, bat, dolphin, and horse, the interactive unit combines engaging BBC footage with student worksheets, evidence-based activities, teaching strategies, and extension ideas.
The lessons are structured around the 5E Instructional Model and can be used as a complete five-day learning experience or adapted to support an existing evolution unit. Students make predictions, analyze evidence from video clips, identify patterns, and develop explanations about natural selection, adaptation, genetic variation, and other mechanisms of evolutionary change.
The guide includes:
- Background information and vocabulary for the topic
- How to access and navigate the interactive unit (including videos and worksheets)
- Teacher tips and implementation guidance for using the materials in whole-class, small-group, pair, or individual settings
- Extension activities including an evolution timeline, animal comparisons, and adaptation research.
- NGSS alignment covering middle and high school standards related to genetic variation, natural selection, adaptation, common ancestry, environmental change, and selective breeding
- Family letter to introduce parents and caregivers to the unit and explain what students will be learning and why (as well as how to watch the full episodes at home)
- Answer keys for each set of worksheets
Whether you're introducing evolution for the first time, reinforcing a concept you're already teaching, or looking for a multimedia station or jigsaw activity, this guide gives you the tools to make Evolution part of your science classroom.
What does a tiny change in digestion have to do with a bat hunting in the darkness? This lesson for ages 11–18 explores how evolution repeatedly gave organisms new ways to find, capture, and use food — and how those changes opened the door to entirely new ways of life.
The BBC video clips from Evolution Episode 3: "The Bat" take you from the evolution of a more efficient digestive system to the development of jaws, revealing how each innovation expanded the possibilities for obtaining energy. It also examines how bats combine specialized adaptations, including wings, teeth, and echolocation, to find and capture food in challenging environments.
Through predictions, comparisons, vocabulary practice, and evidence-based questions, connect individual mutations and adaptations to the larger process of natural selection. The lesson culminates with an ask to trace a chain of evolutionary innovations and explain how changes in feeding and energy use ultimately contributed to the emergence of the modern bat.
Turn your classroom into a global exploration hub! This country report template invites students in Grades 3–8 to become curious investigators — uncovering what makes each country unique and sharing their discoveries in creative ways.
Designed with flexibility in mind, the resource includes two approachable formats:
- Snapshot Style: A lively, visual option that’s perfect for quick learning or younger students. Learners can sketch, label, and highlight key features — like flags, landmarks, foods, and traditions — while building confidence with short responses.
- Explorer Style: A more in-depth format for students ready to dig deeper. It guides learners through topics such as geography, wildlife, culture, and history, helping them organize ideas and develop clear, informative writing.
Best of all, this template pairs seamlessly with BBC videos — bringing countries to life through real-world sights, sounds, and stories. Students can watch, wonder, and then weave what they’ve learned into their own reports.
Quick Teacher Tips: Use country studies as a springboard into wider learning across subjects:
- Geography: Map skills, climate zones, landforms, and ecosystems
- Language Arts: Informational writing, summarizing, note-taking, and presenting
- History: Key events, timelines, and how the past shapes the present
- Math: Population comparisons, distances, currency conversions
- Arts & Culture: Traditional patterns, music, celebrations, and food
- Current Events: Tie in informational reading and media literacy by exploring what’s happening in that country today in an age-appropriate way.
Big news for bird lovers: white storks have returned to Willington Wetlands near Derby, England, for the first time in 600 years.
Just how long is 600 years? Long enough that if the storks had stuck around, they could have watched every Harry Potter movie back-to-back more than 2.5 million times — with plenty of bathroom breaks left over. In American terms, storks disappeared from this area around the time Christopher Columbus was still a kid, decades before he ever sailed to the Americas.
Storks used to be a common sight across the UK, kind of like how you might spot herons, egrets, or bald eagles near lakes and rivers in North America. But they disappeared centuries ago — and now conservationists are trying to bring them back.
Three New Arrivals
Earlier this year, three young storks — one male and two females — hatched and grew to full adult size in just about 12 weeks (for comparison, humans take about 18 years). They've now been moved into a specially built enclosure at the wetlands, complete with its own pond, and have already started exploring their new digs.
The Maya built one of the world's most remarkable civilizations, creating impressive cities, studying the stars, and developing advanced systems of mathematics and writing. Explore the achievements and legacy of the Maya people. Watch the BBC videos below, then take the Kahoot to test your knowledge.
Discover how Maya societies flourished across parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Learn about their temples, calendars, scientific knowledge, and cultural traditions, while exploring how Maya communities continue to live and celebrate their heritage today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a starter activity for lessons on ancient civilizations, geography, or cultural heritage. Follow with the Kahoot as a formative assessment or review activity. Students will examine Maya achievements in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and writing, while learning about the lasting influence of Maya culture. The activity supports comparisons between civilizations and encourages discussion about how ancient knowledge continues to shape the modern world. Watch for misconceptions such as the belief that the Maya disappeared, as millions of Maya people still live throughout Mesoamerica today.
Bring BBC’s Evolution into your classroom with a flexible teaching guide designed to help students investigate how life changes over time. Built around five episodes featuring the elephant, ostrich, bat, dolphin, and horse, the interactive unit combines engaging BBC footage with student worksheets, evidence-based activities, teaching strategies, and extension ideas.
The lessons are structured around the 5E Instructional Model and can be used as a complete five-day learning experience or adapted to support an existing evolution unit. Students make predictions, analyze evidence from video clips, identify patterns, and develop explanations about natural selection, adaptation, genetic variation, and other mechanisms of evolutionary change.
The guide includes:
- Background information and vocabulary for the topic
- How to access and navigate the interactive unit (including videos and worksheets)
- Teacher tips and implementation guidance for using the materials in whole-class, small-group, pair, or individual settings
- Extension activities including an evolution timeline, animal comparisons, and adaptation research.
- NGSS alignment covering middle and high school standards related to genetic variation, natural selection, adaptation, common ancestry, environmental change, and selective breeding
- Family letter to introduce parents and caregivers to the unit and explain what students will be learning and why (as well as how to watch the full episodes at home)
- Answer keys for each set of worksheets
Whether you're introducing evolution for the first time, reinforcing a concept you're already teaching, or looking for a multimedia station or jigsaw activity, this guide gives you the tools to make Evolution part of your science classroom.
What does a tiny change in digestion have to do with a bat hunting in the darkness? This lesson for ages 11–18 explores how evolution repeatedly gave organisms new ways to find, capture, and use food — and how those changes opened the door to entirely new ways of life.
The BBC video clips from Evolution Episode 3: "The Bat" take you from the evolution of a more efficient digestive system to the development of jaws, revealing how each innovation expanded the possibilities for obtaining energy. It also examines how bats combine specialized adaptations, including wings, teeth, and echolocation, to find and capture food in challenging environments.
Through predictions, comparisons, vocabulary practice, and evidence-based questions, connect individual mutations and adaptations to the larger process of natural selection. The lesson culminates with an ask to trace a chain of evolutionary innovations and explain how changes in feeding and energy use ultimately contributed to the emergence of the modern bat.
Turn your classroom into a global exploration hub! This country report template invites students in Grades 3–8 to become curious investigators — uncovering what makes each country unique and sharing their discoveries in creative ways.
Designed with flexibility in mind, the resource includes two approachable formats:
- Snapshot Style: A lively, visual option that’s perfect for quick learning or younger students. Learners can sketch, label, and highlight key features — like flags, landmarks, foods, and traditions — while building confidence with short responses.
- Explorer Style: A more in-depth format for students ready to dig deeper. It guides learners through topics such as geography, wildlife, culture, and history, helping them organize ideas and develop clear, informative writing.
Best of all, this template pairs seamlessly with BBC videos — bringing countries to life through real-world sights, sounds, and stories. Students can watch, wonder, and then weave what they’ve learned into their own reports.
Quick Teacher Tips: Use country studies as a springboard into wider learning across subjects:
- Geography: Map skills, climate zones, landforms, and ecosystems
- Language Arts: Informational writing, summarizing, note-taking, and presenting
- History: Key events, timelines, and how the past shapes the present
- Math: Population comparisons, distances, currency conversions
- Arts & Culture: Traditional patterns, music, celebrations, and food
- Current Events: Tie in informational reading and media literacy by exploring what’s happening in that country today in an age-appropriate way.
Big news for bird lovers: white storks have returned to Willington Wetlands near Derby, England, for the first time in 600 years.
Just how long is 600 years? Long enough that if the storks had stuck around, they could have watched every Harry Potter movie back-to-back more than 2.5 million times — with plenty of bathroom breaks left over. In American terms, storks disappeared from this area around the time Christopher Columbus was still a kid, decades before he ever sailed to the Americas.
Storks used to be a common sight across the UK, kind of like how you might spot herons, egrets, or bald eagles near lakes and rivers in North America. But they disappeared centuries ago — and now conservationists are trying to bring them back.
Three New Arrivals
Earlier this year, three young storks — one male and two females — hatched and grew to full adult size in just about 12 weeks (for comparison, humans take about 18 years). They've now been moved into a specially built enclosure at the wetlands, complete with its own pond, and have already started exploring their new digs.