The Big Exploration

A series of online resources designed to introduce Year 5 and 6 students to Higher Education.

How it works

Welcome to The Big Exploration 2024!

The Big Exploration is a programme of activities for students in Year 5 and 6, and is suitable to be used with whole year groups, class groups, selected students, or as independent homework tasks.

Over 6 weeks, your students will discover what it’s like to go to university, and will explore some of the different subjects and topics that are taught there. In the final two weeks of The Big Exploration, your students will have the opportunity to plan, carry out and present their own piece of research in an area of their choosing.

After signing up to participate in The Big Exploration, you will be given access to our online hub. Here, you will find all of the resources you will need to participate in The Big Exploration.

Each week, we will provide you with an instructional video, accompanying worksheets, and a suggested lesson plan for you to integrate into your timetable.

Find out more by watching the video, or download the video transcript.

Key details

Event type

Online videos with accompanying worksheets and lesson plans.

Audience

Primary school pupils in Year 5 and Year 6.

Length

The Big Exploration is designed to be delivered across 6 weeks.

The activities in the first 4 weeks will take approximately 1 hour to complete. In the final 2 weeks, you may want to allow up to 2 hours to complete the activities.

Location

Your school.

Group size

Any!

The Big Exploration can be delivered to whole year groups, class groups, selected pupils, or set as independent homework tasks.

Cost

Free.

Gatsby Benchmarks

This activity supports Gatsby Benchmarks 3, 4 and 7.

Download our document to see how we have broken down which Gatsby Benchmarks our offerings can support with.

Why you should take part

“I would very much recommend the project to other schools … children have an innate fascination with the world, are curious and ask very thought provoking questions.

This was a real eye opener for them as many of them had no idea of the variety of possible jobs within science.

All of the activities as part of the workshop were thought provoking, challenging and fun.”

Philippa Ben-Aldjia, Science Coordinator at John Henry Newman Academy