Research Champions is a collection of stories about scientists – but it’s also much more!
The stories are intended for readers aged 8+. As well as telling exciting and extraordinary tales, they are designed to be used as teaching tools.
Each resource is packed full of learning potential, held together by an interesting and engaging narrative. The stories contain ‘fact boxes’ of information, which complement the plot and teach the reader about important scientific concepts. What’s more, they also include activities and questions for the reader to engage with, as well as a glossary and list of resources.
All of this means that less confident readers may struggle to read the stories alone. To get the most out of them, it is advised that they are used with the help of parents or teachers.
There are lots of ways that you could do this! A few are listed below:
- Reading the stories through as a class, or as parent and child.
- Breaking each story down and working through it gradually in lessons.
- Setting a homework task to read the story, and then having class discussions about the questions.
- Setting the reading and questions as homework.
- Using the characters from the stories to illustrate and add an extra element to a more general topic such as “Forces” or “Animals”.
To help you integrate the stories with the requirements of the National Curriculum, we’ve highlighted the areas in which the story’s content crosses over with statutory requirements. See our Curriculum Links pages to find out all about this.
If you would like to receive a copy of any of the stories as a PDF, that you can easily print off and use in your classroom, please email me with a request and I can send them on.
However you choose to use the Research Champions stories, we hope you find them effective, and enjoy learning about some amazing scientists.
Happy reading!
Research Champions 