STEM careers and skills activities

Being a scientist isn’t just doing experiments in a lab, there are many different careers a scientist can have. We have developed our ‘scientific careers and skills’ resources to enable teachers to introduce primary learners to a range of scientific careers and allow them to associate the skills they have with those needed to be a scientist.

There are five different versions of the resources available, adapted for the curriculums of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

How to use these resources 

The careers support materials have been designed to help your learners understand essential skills for the world of work and to explore the many different types of career that use scientific skills.

What’s included?

There are three types of resource supplied:

1. Career fact files – these give learners information about different careers linked to curriculum topics and the skills needed for each job. There are two versions of this resource, one has less text and will be suitable for use with learners who need support with language.
2. Skills card sort  – a game learners can play to discuss and agree on the most important skills for different jobs.
3. Career poster – a set of two posters you can use to help learners visualise themselves in a range of scientific careers.

The teacher support guide gives ideas and support for using the different resources within your classroom teaching for different age ranges: 4–7 years, 7–9 years or 9–11 years. It also highlights opportunities to practice literacy and numeracy as well as wider working scientifical skills, DT and IT.

How to use the resources

There is no right or wrong way to use the careers resources. We recommend the following ways:

To support you in teaching about careers through engaging science-based contexts

If you come to the careers resources with your specific topic in mind, the resources will highlight areas of science that you could link to. If you’re in this situation, you have the flexibility to choose the scientific context that fits best with your topic.

To support you in teaching science with careers as a ‘hook’

If you come to the careers resources with a focus on your science teaching, the resource will provide ways of introducing careers into the science topics or to give a ‘hook’ for the topic.

To support you in planning a whole school or whole year group focus on careers

If you come to the careers resources with a focus on careers, either across the school or within a year group, the resources will support you in finding activities appropriate for each age group.