Nanogirl Labs have joined forces with the Ministry of Education and TVNZ's Home Learning TV channel to launch six, 30 minute STEM lessons aimed at Year 4 – 8 students.

Breaking It Down will be hosted by Nanotechnologist and science educator Dr Michelle Dickinson.

Michelle will be presenting STEM lessons which will involve experiments and activities that will be 'fun, interactive, and educational."

A statement issued by Nanogirl Labs Ltd says the series is in line with the New Zealand national curriculum.

'Following extensive consultation with teachers each episode explores a different topic: light, the human brain, plastics, materials, energy and electricity, and sound.

'Each episode will involve fun hands-on experiments that can be done at home to keep the practical side of lessons alive even if students aren't physically back at school.”

Michelle will also interview a real scientist or engineer in the field about what they do for a job to help students see New Zealand role models and career pathways in the series.

Each programme is accompanied by a set of notes to help teachers plan lessons in advance and prepare their students for the topics to be covered.

Notes include achievement aims, learning outcomes, experiment instructions and ideas for students to explore topics further.

Teachers can sign up to participate at here.

Michelle says they wanted to do their bit to help teachers to get students to learn practical skills for the modern world through ingenuity, creativity and problem-solving.

'We have the utmost respect and gratitude for teachers everywhere who have worked so hard over the last few weeks to ensure their students can continue to learn remotely.\

'We approached teachers to understand how we could help, and it was clear they wanted curriculum-based learning with a hands-on live experiment component.”

'The medium of TV will allow us to reach out to a broad spectrum of school children who might not have access to our online learning platform nanogirlslab.com.”

Breaking It Down will air from this coming week, every Tuesday and Thursday on TVNZ's Home Learning Channel.