The summer break may be a chance to carry out research for some future school trips. With today’s emphasis on core skills of literacy and numeracy, other subjects may be neglected and the school trip can be an opportunity for nature visits, learning about the arts or hands-on experience of science and history. This Teachers’ TV series (repeated through the day on June 24) looks at visits for children in both primary and secondary school. It starts at the Eden Project, where a Year 7 class gets the chance to experience the heat, humidity and smells of the rainforest, and to learn how plants contribute to the atmosphere and the environment. Staff from the project’s education department explain what is on offer and teachers describe the benefits for their pupils.

In the next hour, Year 7 heads for the National Space Centre in Leicester.

Later, pupils from a London secondary get an introduction to opera at the Coliseum, a Year 8 group watch the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in rehearsal, and Year 9s become deeply involved in the First World War during a trip to the battlefields around Ypres; the last of these was organised by a specialised tour operator. These broadcasts of Worth the Trip are followed by three other series about schools visits: Using Museums, Using Libraries and Using the Environment. You’ll get ideas on how to exploit resources such as the Natural History Museum or HMS Belfast. The programmes will probably succeed best if they suggest ideas for visits close to your own school and new ways in which resources (and their education officers) can be integrated into the curriculum.

Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome Discovery Civilisation Tuesday, June 27, 8-9pm

A documentary, being premiered on the Discovery Civilisation channel this week, that might provide some background for a visit to Rome (or, in the last resort, act as a substitute for one, in your Latin or history class).

The seven wonders are quite predictable: the Pantheon, the aqueducts, the Appian Way, the Baths of Caracalla, Trajan’s Markets, the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum - a nice mixture, as it happens, demonstrating the Romans’ concern for comfort, commerce, civic life and entertainment.

How Am I Different? Teachers’ TV Monday, June 26, 12.30-1pm

Sara, a 14-year-old refugee from Kosovo, lives with her mother in London.

This film follows them in the months last year while they waited to learn if their application for asylum had been accepted, telling the story mainly in the words of Sara, who taught herself English by watching television.

The sort of evidence in the debate on asylum seekers that politicians dismiss as “anecdotal”.

Full listings can be found at:

* www.teacher.tvprogrammeGuide.do

* discoverycivilisation.co.uk_listings