Low-resource or low equipment sharing resources


The resources on this page have been selected to support educators in finding CREST project ideas that require little equipment, can be run outside of a lab or at home, and use equipment that doesn’t require much sharing.

Find out more about the different CREST Award levels here: CREST Awards.

At primary level, our curated home learning packs don’t require many resources so they’re perfect to use either in the classroom or at home. For Primary teachers who have CLEAPSS access, we recommend this piece on doing Practical activities within your bubble.

At secondary level, each project brief has an overall challenge, ideas for getting started and a list of resources you might need. Read the health and safety section carefully before you begin. Young people should create a plan for their project and a risk assessment before they begin any practical activity. You can use the CLEAPSS student safety sheets as well as the rest of the CLEAPSS website to help them.

If you are looking for further advice on how to get started with CREST, visit our help centre and check out our FAQs.

If you are looking for ideas for running CREST at home, many of the below resources are suitable, and you can still access our Star and SuperStar Home Learning packs below. If you need further support, check out the CREST at home section of the Help Centre.


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Silver home learning student guide

  • Text
  • Improve
  • Completed
  • Submit
  • Wider
  • Develop
  • Assessor
  • Assessment
  • Reflections
  • Criteria
  • Crest
This resource is published under an Attribution - non-commercial - no derivatives 4.0 International creative commons licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Before your project Read

Before your project Read through this student guide. It will make the CREST process easier for any adults supporting you. If you are unsure of anything, they should be able to help. During your project Look at the criteria we use to assess your project, and make sure you understand what you need to do to get a CREST Silver Award. Use the CREST criteria as a guide, ensuring all the criteria are covered as you work. Take lots of notes of what you do, including your planning, from early on in the project. This will help you to produce your report and personal reflections. We understand that in the current climate practical work may be limited, or not possible. Check out the different types of CREST project that you could submit. You should create a risk assessment before you begin any practical activity. You can use the CLEAPSS student safety sheets to help you, and check your risk assessment with an adult, preferably a teacher. CREST criteria 1. Planning your project • Set a clear aim and break it down into smaller steps/objectives • Explain the wider purpose of your project • Consider different ways to do your project • Describe your plan for how to complete your project and give reasons for the approach you chose • Explain how you planned your time and organised who would do what 2. Throughout your project • Say who and what materials you needed to help complete your project • Summarise the background research you did to help you understand your project and where you found the information 3. Finalising your project • Make logical conclusions and explain the implications for the wider world • Describe how what you did affected the outcome of your project • Explain what you learned and how you would change your project if you did it again 4. Project-wide criteria • Show understanding of the science behind your project • Describe how you made sensible decisions about your project. Consider safety and risks • Show creativity in the way you carried out your project • Explain how you identified and overcame problems • Explain your project clearly in writing (and conversation, if relevant).

Producing your report At the end of the project, you will need to produce a report to introduce, describe and evaluate your work – this does not have to be a written report. However you produce your report, make sure you demonstrate how you met the criteria. Alongside your report, you will need to complete the CREST Silver Award student profile to check you’ve covered all of the assessment criteria in your report. The profile form is there to help you as you write your report, so completing it at the end with your report should be very straightforward. If you are working as part of a team, your team can produce a joint report but each team member should have a separate student profile form. Not doing so will mean being asked to resubmit. When you submit online, a project completed by a group can be submitted jointly, with one report and a profile form per student. You can also submit separately using the same report and your own profile form. Groups that have done separate project work should submit separately, so that each project is assessed on its own merits. Remember to: • Number the pages in your report or structure the work that you produce in manageable sections. This will help you reference areas of the report when you fill out the profile form. On the profile form, put the page numbers from your report where the assessor can find the evidence and the paragraph number on that page. The pages in your report should be numbered, but you don’t need to number the paragraphs in your report. • Use your own words. We want to hear about your project and what you did. You should not use information copied straight from the internet in your report, unless quoting as a reference. • Make sure to list the sources of your research information. At Silver, we don’t mind what format your references are in, as long and it’s consistent and you give us the information we need to find any sources you used. If you want advice on this, please ask an adult, ideally your teacher if you have access to them. If not, online research will provide examples of how you could reference. • If you think evidence for some criteria can be found in your personal reflections, you should refer the assessor to these sections using the same system as below. A sample profile form might look like this:

Challenges for ages 5-11


These challenges take about an hour each. Once you have completed eight of them you can get a CREST SuperStar Award. Start by downloading the Passport. Children can use this to record each activity they complete.

Our curated packs for home learning require very little equipment or resources, so are ideal now that you are back in the classroom. They also add flexibility as students can finish their Star or SuperStar Award at home, if needed.

Each challenge has an organiser card and an activity card. All the instructions to set up the activity are in the organiser card. Read the 'watch out' section carefully before you begin. Children can use the activity card or you can read it through together.

Find out more about Star and SuperStar levels here.


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Projects for ages 11-18


Each of these projects take between ten and thirty hours to complete. The project briefs have an overall challenge, ideas for getting started and a list of resources students might need. Before they begin, students should read the health and safety section carefully. Once students have completed their projects, they can get a CREST Discovery, Bronze, Silver or Gold Award. The amount of time spent on the project and how well they met the CREST criteria determines the level students will be awarded.

Start by downloading the relevant Workbook or Profile Form below. Young people can use these to help them complete their project and record their progress.

Young people should create a plan for their project and a risk assessment before they begin any practical activity, which should be checked by a teacher. You can use the CLEAPSS student safety sheets as well as the rest of the CLEAPSS website to help them.

For Bronze projects, once a student has completed their project, you can sign up to assess it and order their personalised certificate here. Bronze assessment is incredibly easy and can also be adapted for at-home learning if needed due to unexpected lockdowns, meaning parents can always assess when teachers cannot. Check out how to assess a Bronze project here

For Silver and Gold projects student work will need to be submitted online and will be assessed by a CREST assessor. Learn more about assessment for Silver Awards here

Find out more about Bronze level here.

Find out more about Silver level here.

Find out more about Gold level here.


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