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.
It’s been a summer of fires all over the world, and Canada is no exception, as wildfires swept through western Canada, officials say some of them spread with frightening speed.
Thousands have been forced to leave their homes as fires move through remote areas. One resident described watching a fire grow from about 50 hectares to 5,000 hectares — that’s about 0.2 to 20 square miles — in only two to three hours. Think about something growing to 100 times its size in the time it takes to watch a movie!
Of course, these are scary by themselves, but they're part of an even larger problem. Earlier in the summer, about 200 fires burned around Ontario, and smoke traveled hundreds of miles, affecting places as far south as Minnesota and New York. In British Columbia alone, officials said there had been 70 new fires in seven days and 105 active wildfires across the province.
The fires triggered a massive response — more than 2,000 people across many different jobs, including firefighters, aviation teams, heavy-equipment crews, and people protecting buildings — have been working to help contain the damage. It’s great there are brave individuals helping, but they may not have so much time to rest. Wildfires aren’t new, but they are becoming more common and more severe as the climate changes.
You’ve probably heard your parents (and everybody else) complain about insurance. And that’s fair, it’s expensive! Especially when it comes to electric cars, whose owners often pay higher more for insurance than drivers of more conventional cars. But why is that? Why are people being punished for trying to use less gas? Why does the cruel world continue to forsake us?!
Well, researchers investigated exactly that… the insurance thing, not the greater, overarching “cruel world” question. The team at a testing lab staged a crash at just 10 kilometers (or about 5 miles) per hour. Not exactly the crash that’d have you gripping your seat in a nail-biter of an action movie, but important for research. From the outside, the damage looked minor, but underneath, the high-voltage charging port had moved and some of its components had broken.
The problem was that the damaged charging components formed part of a much larger unit. So, instead of replacing one small broken piece, technicians would need to replace the charger and some of its cabling. One component alone was priced in the thousands, and leaving it out would render the car pretty useless.
It’s great that modern electric vehicles already have to meet high safety standards, but the concern is how expensive and difficult they can be to repair after relatively minor accidents. Experts say manufacturers need to design future EVs with repair in mind, protecting expensive components and making individual parts easier to replace. Seems easy enough… right?
The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) is an annual motorcycle racing event held over two weeks in late May and early June. It's widely regarded as the world's fastest and most dangerous road race, and it draws fans from around the world.
Though the race is more than 100 years old, this year's event had some extra excitement. Channing Tatum and Eve Hewson were there filming scenes for a new Amazon MGM movie inspired by the TT. Parts of the film were shot alongside the real races, with film crews mixing in among actual competitors and fans. The movie is called Isle of Man, and Brad Pitt is one of its producers.
Movie stars weren't the only famous faces in the crowd — spectators also included Formula One drivers Oscar Piastri and Mark Webber and cyclist Mark Cavendish. Fans of movies and motorcycles alike had plenty to be excited about at this year's race.
Explore how women are represented in films and why those portrayals matter in this Kahoot inspired by BBC’s Her Story —The Female Revolution. Through the ideas and research shared by Geena Davis and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, students will examine how movies and television influence the way people think about gender, power, and equality.
This Kahoot explores questions about representation, stereotypes, screen time, leadership roles, and how media can shape expectations for girls and boys. Students will build listening skills, vocabulary, and critical-thinking abilities while considering why balanced representation in film and entertainment can have a powerful social impact.
Watch the related BBC video, The Fight for Females in Film, then invite your Grade 6–12 students to test their knowledge and explore how storytelling and media influence culture, identity, and opportunity.
Dive into this curated playlist of clips from Got Science?, the BBC’s magazine-style series that unpacks the science behind everyday life. From why we melt at baby animals to why scary movies make us jump, each episode reveals the surprising biology and behavior shaping our world. Students can explore questions like why flies are nearly impossible to catch and why bedbugs are so tough to defeat. Every video includes discussion questions, writing prompts, and more to spark curiosity and critical thinking in middle and high school classrooms.
Just like Chunky Chimp, we have to learn to be ourselves. This fun lesson uses the Bluey episode "Movies" as the kickoff to a classroom conversation about the importance of being yourself. The lesson includes printables for three activities in which kids make courage capes, draw self-portraits, and decorate puzzle pieces that show things that make them unique.
Movies Episode Summary: It is Bluey’s first trip to the cinema, but she’s worried that the movie will be too scary. When Bingo starts running amok in the theatre, she must conquer her fear and help Dad out.
Watch the episode here! (Click here to watch in Australia.)
In The Fight for Females in Film, Geena Davis, an actress and founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, points out that for every three male characters speaking in movies, there's only one female. She believes that by changing how women are portrayed in movies, we can help create a more balanced world with women in powerful roles. This video is excerpted from BBC's Her Story: The Female Revolution, which explores the history and impact of women’s rights movements and achievements of women.
Football, rugby… esports? At Countesthorpe Academy, a secondary school in the UK, students can step into a full esports arena packed with high-end gaming computers — but it’s about a lot more than just playing games.
The school is one of the first to offer an esports qualification, helping students explore how the gaming industry really works and what kinds of careers exist behind the screens.
Esports might feel like entertainment, but it’s also a fast-growing global industry. In fact, the video game industry is now worth several times more than both the music and movie industries combined.
Students studying esports look at everything from how games make money and the strategies players use, to teamwork, mental health, and building skills like focus and resilience — skills that matter in gaming and way beyond it.
In Alfred Hitchcock and Britain's First Talkie, host Lily Cole discusses how Hitchcock turned the creeping dread people felt due to nuclear war into art. She learns about his 10th movie, Blackmail, which was Britain's first talkie. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, a documentary series celebrating the achievements of the most influential figures of the era.
In Velociraptor Misconceptions, naturalist Steve Backshall uncovers what the movies got wrong about this creature. What it actually looked like and how it fought might surprise you! This video is excerpted from BBC’s Deadly Dinosaurs, a documentary series in which host Steve Backshall is on the hunt for the deadliest animals to have walked the Earth — dinosaurs — exploring features of several species and putting their abilities to the test to reveal the raw power of these creatures.
In The Magic Behind the Entertainment Capital of Hollywood, host Simon Reeve tours through the famous streets of Hollywood, California, where dreams are made! From the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame to the stunning views of beaches and mountains, he explores why LA is known as the entertainment capital of the world. With 320 days of sunshine each year, it’s easy to see why millions flock to this glittering city to chase their Hollywood dreams. This video is excerpted from BBC’s The Americas With Simon Reeve, in which Simon Reeve explores the landscapes, cultures, and wildlife of North and South America
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.
It’s been a summer of fires all over the world, and Canada is no exception, as wildfires swept through western Canada, officials say some of them spread with frightening speed.
Thousands have been forced to leave their homes as fires move through remote areas. One resident described watching a fire grow from about 50 hectares to 5,000 hectares — that’s about 0.2 to 20 square miles — in only two to three hours. Think about something growing to 100 times its size in the time it takes to watch a movie!
Of course, these are scary by themselves, but they're part of an even larger problem. Earlier in the summer, about 200 fires burned around Ontario, and smoke traveled hundreds of miles, affecting places as far south as Minnesota and New York. In British Columbia alone, officials said there had been 70 new fires in seven days and 105 active wildfires across the province.
The fires triggered a massive response — more than 2,000 people across many different jobs, including firefighters, aviation teams, heavy-equipment crews, and people protecting buildings — have been working to help contain the damage. It’s great there are brave individuals helping, but they may not have so much time to rest. Wildfires aren’t new, but they are becoming more common and more severe as the climate changes.
You’ve probably heard your parents (and everybody else) complain about insurance. And that’s fair, it’s expensive! Especially when it comes to electric cars, whose owners often pay higher more for insurance than drivers of more conventional cars. But why is that? Why are people being punished for trying to use less gas? Why does the cruel world continue to forsake us?!
Well, researchers investigated exactly that… the insurance thing, not the greater, overarching “cruel world” question. The team at a testing lab staged a crash at just 10 kilometers (or about 5 miles) per hour. Not exactly the crash that’d have you gripping your seat in a nail-biter of an action movie, but important for research. From the outside, the damage looked minor, but underneath, the high-voltage charging port had moved and some of its components had broken.
The problem was that the damaged charging components formed part of a much larger unit. So, instead of replacing one small broken piece, technicians would need to replace the charger and some of its cabling. One component alone was priced in the thousands, and leaving it out would render the car pretty useless.
It’s great that modern electric vehicles already have to meet high safety standards, but the concern is how expensive and difficult they can be to repair after relatively minor accidents. Experts say manufacturers need to design future EVs with repair in mind, protecting expensive components and making individual parts easier to replace. Seems easy enough… right?
The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) is an annual motorcycle racing event held over two weeks in late May and early June. It's widely regarded as the world's fastest and most dangerous road race, and it draws fans from around the world.
Though the race is more than 100 years old, this year's event had some extra excitement. Channing Tatum and Eve Hewson were there filming scenes for a new Amazon MGM movie inspired by the TT. Parts of the film were shot alongside the real races, with film crews mixing in among actual competitors and fans. The movie is called Isle of Man, and Brad Pitt is one of its producers.
Movie stars weren't the only famous faces in the crowd — spectators also included Formula One drivers Oscar Piastri and Mark Webber and cyclist Mark Cavendish. Fans of movies and motorcycles alike had plenty to be excited about at this year's race.
Explore how women are represented in films and why those portrayals matter in this Kahoot inspired by BBC’s Her Story —The Female Revolution. Through the ideas and research shared by Geena Davis and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, students will examine how movies and television influence the way people think about gender, power, and equality.
This Kahoot explores questions about representation, stereotypes, screen time, leadership roles, and how media can shape expectations for girls and boys. Students will build listening skills, vocabulary, and critical-thinking abilities while considering why balanced representation in film and entertainment can have a powerful social impact.
Watch the related BBC video, The Fight for Females in Film, then invite your Grade 6–12 students to test their knowledge and explore how storytelling and media influence culture, identity, and opportunity.
Dive into this curated playlist of clips from Got Science?, the BBC’s magazine-style series that unpacks the science behind everyday life. From why we melt at baby animals to why scary movies make us jump, each episode reveals the surprising biology and behavior shaping our world. Students can explore questions like why flies are nearly impossible to catch and why bedbugs are so tough to defeat. Every video includes discussion questions, writing prompts, and more to spark curiosity and critical thinking in middle and high school classrooms.
Just like Chunky Chimp, we have to learn to be ourselves. This fun lesson uses the Bluey episode "Movies" as the kickoff to a classroom conversation about the importance of being yourself. The lesson includes printables for three activities in which kids make courage capes, draw self-portraits, and decorate puzzle pieces that show things that make them unique.
Movies Episode Summary: It is Bluey’s first trip to the cinema, but she’s worried that the movie will be too scary. When Bingo starts running amok in the theatre, she must conquer her fear and help Dad out.
Watch the episode here! (Click here to watch in Australia.)
In The Fight for Females in Film, Geena Davis, an actress and founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, points out that for every three male characters speaking in movies, there's only one female. She believes that by changing how women are portrayed in movies, we can help create a more balanced world with women in powerful roles. This video is excerpted from BBC's Her Story: The Female Revolution, which explores the history and impact of women’s rights movements and achievements of women.
Football, rugby… esports? At Countesthorpe Academy, a secondary school in the UK, students can step into a full esports arena packed with high-end gaming computers — but it’s about a lot more than just playing games.
The school is one of the first to offer an esports qualification, helping students explore how the gaming industry really works and what kinds of careers exist behind the screens.
Esports might feel like entertainment, but it’s also a fast-growing global industry. In fact, the video game industry is now worth several times more than both the music and movie industries combined.
Students studying esports look at everything from how games make money and the strategies players use, to teamwork, mental health, and building skills like focus and resilience — skills that matter in gaming and way beyond it.
In Alfred Hitchcock and Britain's First Talkie, host Lily Cole discusses how Hitchcock turned the creeping dread people felt due to nuclear war into art. She learns about his 10th movie, Blackmail, which was Britain's first talkie. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, a documentary series celebrating the achievements of the most influential figures of the era.
In Velociraptor Misconceptions, naturalist Steve Backshall uncovers what the movies got wrong about this creature. What it actually looked like and how it fought might surprise you! This video is excerpted from BBC’s Deadly Dinosaurs, a documentary series in which host Steve Backshall is on the hunt for the deadliest animals to have walked the Earth — dinosaurs — exploring features of several species and putting their abilities to the test to reveal the raw power of these creatures.
In The Magic Behind the Entertainment Capital of Hollywood, host Simon Reeve tours through the famous streets of Hollywood, California, where dreams are made! From the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame to the stunning views of beaches and mountains, he explores why LA is known as the entertainment capital of the world. With 320 days of sunshine each year, it’s easy to see why millions flock to this glittering city to chase their Hollywood dreams. This video is excerpted from BBC’s The Americas With Simon Reeve, in which Simon Reeve explores the landscapes, cultures, and wildlife of North and South America