Big Classes, Small Classes and Thank Yous

The Physics Teaching Podcast

Thomas and Robin return for season 4, inexplicably without any awards for podcasting gold, but there are bigger mysteries in the world. Not least, how does Thomas survive his DIY attempts?

We start talking about BIG classes at A-level, and ways to get around a lack of equipment, but also address the other end of the size scale thanks to a question from “Thomas Young” (not that one) who has a rolled-together year 12/13 group of 3 students. Thomas and Robin make various logistic suggestions, but if you have any experience of this we’d love to hear from you: contact us below…

We talk practice – i.e. becoming proficient through repeating techniques until they are 2^nd nature. All very well but where do you find resources to help?? Well here’s some info…

https://isaacphysics.org/

https://sciencedoctor.school.blog/

https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/

We are honoured to welcome Emeritus Professor Averil MacDonald who tells us about a thank you event that the IOP ran at the end of last year to say thank you to physics teachers. If you are interested in the logistics of an online conference that allows ofr networking and breakout rooms etc, see https://remo.co/conference/

We reflect on how physics teachers LOVE getting together and talking physics teaching. If you want to find the latest events, head to TalkPhysics events section and you will see details of all the IOP events both online and in person. Averil also mentions eventbrite as a good place to find international events, and don’t forget, you can tell us about an event and we will happily promote.

We finish with some ways that we ‘start’ at the beginning of the year to save our and our students’ sanities – vocab tests, units and conversions are all useful foundations that won’t generate huge amounts of marking and will be a good foundation for the future.

However you’ve started, we hope you are enjoying it and that you are still on top of things. If you don’t feel on top of things, don’t worry and a particular tip of the hat to all the NQTs listening / reading – let us know how you are getting on.

Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social . You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

Music

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.
• Seasons 5 and 6: Crescents by Ketsa.
• Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
• Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
• Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

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