Simon has been teaching Physics for over 27 years in British state schools and international school around the world. He specializes in International Baccalaureate, A level and IGCSE. He is now head of the secondary school at the British School of Tashkent, a Nord Anglia school and in August he will become International Principal of NAS Guangzhou Panyu. He is a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement and is one of their "Subject geniuses" for Science.
Simon has been teaching Physics for over 27 years in British state schools and international school around the world. He specializes in International Baccalaureate, A level and IGCSE. He is now head of the secondary school at the British School of Tashkent, a Nord Anglia school and in August he will become International Principal of NAS Guangzhou Panyu. He is a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement and is one of their "Subject geniuses" for Science.
I introduce mind-mapping in my first lesson with a class. I build up a mind-map about myself on the smartboard as a way of introduction – all my students now know I hate dogs and banks, support Nottingham Forest, love Physics and listen to Bruckner and RUSH. I then get students to do their own mind-map in the front of their books about themselves – making sure they use colour and illustrations to make them think and make the mind-map more memorable.
For this Rocks lesson you can use their mind-mapping skills by putting notes on a PowerPoint set to “loop” and students have to organize the notes into a mind-map. Go to “Set-up slide show” and check the “loop continuously until ‘esc’” box. Then go to “Animations” and click on “Advance slide automatically” and put 10 seconds between each slide. It normally takes about 4 or 5 repetitions of the loop for students to complete their maps. This is especially useful for topics which are content heavy and where students need to remember facts such as Rocks or Radioactivity.
Practical activity and presentation on testing water and purifying. Use distilled water and a batch of dilute salty water as the two samples for the practical activity. Covers purifying water for consumption too.
To be used as a useful summary after students have looked at the speed of sound in different substance. The multiple-choice format is useful for those of you preparing for these style exams (Cambridge IGCSE). The 'write your own' multiple choice questions at the end are surprisingly difficult to do, and are an excellent link to sentence structure/grammar etc.
Year 9 or GCSE. PowerPoint discusses terminal velocity and falling without air resistance and there is an investigation (with investigation write-up template) at the end. I should mention that there are running jokes about my dislike of dogs (sorry!).
End of topic summary sheet to stick in their books. Useful for examination revision too. Could be used for them to write their own worksheets etc. Contains a 'party' analogy which I have found useful in explaining rates and collision theory.
"Who wants to be a Millionaire" style revision PowerPoint complete with music! Don't forget to give them their 3 lifelines! (50/50, ask the audience and phone a friend). I always do this in the style of the actual show, getting one student at a time to come to the front. We do a little interview too! A good 30/40 minutes of discussion and revision! Suitable for GCSE lower groups too.
Genes, DNA bases, mitosis, miosis genetic engineering IGCSE. Everything they need to know with some revision of earlier work on Punnett squares etc too.
Students investigate length of day in Summer/Winter. Each group of students need a light source and access to a globe (blow up ones will do). The instructions are quite hard to follow for some kids - perhaps groups could be organised by attainment and the teacher could assist the lower group.
Everything they need to know about allotropes of sulphur, manufacture of sulphur via the Contact process, uses of sulphuric acid, sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and electrolysis of brine. Written for IGCSE.
Two comprehensive lessons with practical sheets and presentations. Hooke's law for GCSE/IGCSE with calculation of spring constant and as an extension finding the spring constant for two springs in series and parallel.
A lesson for IGCSE (14-6 year old) Coordinated Science although this will also work at KS3 (11-14 year olds). The slide that says 'Follow Mr Porter' I normally take them outside and show them how to play 'Wall Ball' and hence demonstrate the law of reflection. Please message me if you don't know 'wall ball'. The sheets are exercises in using the law, either drawing rays of light to show light being bounced off mirrors to find treasure on a treasure map or trying to 'zap' a dog (I have a running joke about my hate of dogs in my lessons). Please feel free to substitute something other than a dog!
Presentation, examples, worksheet and practical activities for the Equations of Motion (SUVAT). Written for IB but fine for A level and GCSE. Written with humour by a very experienced Physics teacher.
Ready made Science display for any lab. 20 Science jokes and their explanations. Print out and stick randomly on board (all jokes have humorous cartoons etc too). Students have to match the joke with the correct explanation. Will cover a large board! (just miss a few jokes out to cover smaller board). Very popular! Probably best for seondary, but why not push those primary kids?
