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.