Physics for Non Specialists Video

Are you teaching secondary school science and looking for a range of effective teaching strategies, particularly to help with your physics lesson plans? This video from the National Science Learning Centre in York, focuses on science teachers who don’t specialise in teaching physics.  Participants on this physics for non specialists course undertake a residential continuing professional development period to improve their physics lesson plans through reviewing and updating effective teaching strategies for physics as well as their understanding and knowledge.  Science teachers will cover developing successful teaching strategies in physics  as well as a range of classroom management strategies. During the course there will be the opportunity to visit the National STEM Centre which houses a range of physics teaching resources.

Katy Bloom, Professional Development Leader at the National Science Learning Centre, discusses the issues facing schools teaching physics, in particular where non-specialist physics teachers are teaching the subject. Katy’s course, Physics for Non-Specialists, can assist to develop confidence, knowledge, understanding and anecdotes to successfully teach physics for 11-16 year olds.

You can find more information on the Science Learning Centre website for courses relating to Physics for Non Specialists.

The network of Science Learning Centres offers a range of continuing professional development physics training courses for all levels of the curriculum.

Merry Christmas from the Science Learning Centres

Welcome to the last of our resource and activity gifts for Christmas.

A huge thank you to all of our delegates who have participated at one of the Science Learning Centres across the country this year.

Here are the last of our resources for you to share, use or take inspiration from.

Primary

(Please scroll down for Secondary)
In this video, Zoe Crompton provides winter and snow related ideas and activities for primary school children.

Winter Primary Science Activities

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Here are the primary CPD courses coming up in the New Year.

Secondary

This video shows Simon Quinnell demonstrating a range of experiments which can be performed at the Christmas dinner table.

Science Activities for the Christmas Dinner Table

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Here are the  secondary CPD courses coming up next term.

If you like the ideas behind Simon and Zoe’s videos and would like to learn more demonstrations then you should consider attending our practical demonstration courses:

Technicians as Demonstrators:  The Practical Demonstrator in the Classroom

or one of our regional demonstration courses.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported the network of Science Learning Centres over the past year.  In particular to the major funders of our awards and bursaries.

The Wellcome Trust		Department for Education
AstraZeneca		AstraZeneca Science Teaching Trust
BAE Systems		BP
General Electric Foundation		GlaxoSmithKline
Rolls-Royce		Vodafone
Vodafone Group Foundation

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year from the Science Learning Centres and the National STEM Centre, we look forward to welcoming you back in 2012.

12 Christmas activities in the science classroom

Ho ho ho.  It’s the last few days of school before the Christmas holidays and your pupils are all far too excited to concentrate on anything other than the looming visit by the big man in red  – and the possibility of making snowmen.

So how do you keep their minds engaged on the subject, yet tie it in with the seasonally influenced lack of concentration in class?

We’ve come up with a range of websites and activities that should come in useful to provide stimulation, enrichment and entertainment before the school holidays, whilst retaining a modicum of scientific learning.

We’d also welcome your comments to share other resources or activities that you have used or found useful.  The #Asechat twitter feed on November 29 also provided other ideas.

12 Ideas for a Scientific Christmas Class

• Christmas Tree Buzzer Game

A great idea to get students to use what they know about electrical currents from Snapshot Science. Pupils use the templates and materials to build a fun game.  It’s showing its age with the requirement of a film canister (this may spark a discussion as to what one of these is!), an alternative may be a small yoghurt or cream pot.

• The Holly Leaf Miner investigation

The Holly Leaf Miner investigation.  The British Ecological Society has a number of investigations in this fieldwork booklet, page 40 outlines Ilkley Grammar School’s investigation into the Holly Leaf Miner.  An interesting way to get the class outside in the school grounds. Source: British Ecological Society

• Christmas Lights parallel and series circuits.

Why do the lights of a christmas tree not work if one of the bulbs is blown? Use this question as a great way to demonstrate practical electricity in real terms… and maybe get all your christmas lights sorted to go up on the tree!  The pupils could be encouraged to bring in their own faulty christmas lights to fix and test?  Another way of demonstrating how science affects us in all sorts of real life activities.

• Hold the front page

A  fun scientific history lesson here, to help understand the progression of scientific endeavours through a calendar of The Sun’s front pages: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/hold_ye_front_page/science/. Inspiration courtesy of our own Lynne Cooper and The Sun.

Firstly produce a list of selected front pages(12?) without dates from the website .

1 Get the pupils to put the front pages into possible date order, earliest first.

2 Then group the pages (into threes) and split the pupils into teams to find out more about their front page/pages either from the site or other websites.

3  Pupils are then asked to Post-it note the date order for the front pages as  a class . Or do something brilliant on your interactive white board so kids can move around the  front pages .

4. In true 12 day of Christmas fashion get the teams to give a one minute jingle (including everyone in the team) singing back information on the front page that they have been researching! In date order of course!

Can be as long or as short as required there are 60 front pages on the site all have more information and some have video clips and of course that are put into date order!

• Make your own real snow

With predictions of a white christmas receding for this winter here is an opportunity to turn this around and make your own real snow.  This page also has some interesting notes about how ski resorts plan and make their own snow, so a good opportunity to relate science to a real world application. Source: About.com

• Christmas chromatography -  Deck the Halls

Explore chromatography with your students by making a string of “light bulbs!” Students cut light bulb shapes out of coffee filters or filter paper and use water-soluble markers, pipe cleaners, and water to create a colorful display. Source: Science Spot and T.Trimpe of  Havana Junior High, Havana, IL. USA.

• Just one Father Christmas?

Who are Father Christmas’s ancestors? Are all British Mr Christmases descended from one ‘Father’ Christmas? After finding out how researchers plan to use DNA fingerprinting to discover the answer to this question, students play ‘Call My Bluff’ or sort true/false cards to reinforce their understanding of inheritance. Source: UPD8

• Santa’s sleigh race

A second offering from Snapshot Science is Santa’s Sleigh Race, which involves making a racing sleigh and then having a race.  The science in the race is to test whose sleigh travels the furthest and then use force diagrams to explain why the sleigh moves.

• Track Santa

In past years Norad (North American Aerospace Defense Command ) have tracked Santa Claus , a tradition started in 1955 after a Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number and put them through to the Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” It is now possible to follow it on google earth and google maps. http://www.noradsanta.org/

• Reindeer Quiz

Here is an easy quiz to help develop knowledge and understanding of Reindeer (as recently starred on David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet series).  Some quick facts can be found here to help answer the quiz questions.  Link courtesy of Enchanted Learning

• How to cook the perfect turkey

Another example from the very good UPD8 website.  This time looking at a combination of chemistry (the chemical reaction of cooking meat)  and physics (heat transferral)  using the cooking of a turkey. Source: UPD8

• Will Santa make it?

Santa is planning ahead for when humans colonise the rest of the Solar System – he may decide to move to another planet! In this fun activity pupils analyse planetary data to find which planet best satisfies Santa’s future requirements.

They then e-mail Santa to advise him of their decision and – if you wish – design a Christmas card to show why this planet is such a great place to spend Christmas, http://www.upd8.org.uk/activity/58/Santa-2025.html

We hope that some of these ideas prove useful in the run up to Christmas.  In a similar vein you may also be interested in two of our courses that will help enrich your teaching or provide you with new ways of demonstrating scientific principles:

Leading Science Enrichment

Demonstrations: Teachers and Technicians Inspiring Science Learning

Five easy things to help enrich your science teaching

By John Walker

How do we really bring STEM subjects alive for learners?  How do we provide those memorable and stimulating experiences to help them see beyond the limits of the school curriculum and realise that STEM subjects are both relevant and exciting for real? 

Teachers usually recognise that the answers to these and similar questions do not lie in rigidly following published teaching schemes or specifications.  But still, they can struggle to find enough hours in the day to plan and research how to inject that much-needed excitement.  The National Science Learning Centre is running the Essential Science Enrichment course which addresses this, providing not just examples of worthwhile activities and resources schools can tap into, but also strategies for managing enrichment so that its benefits are maximised and lasting.

Enriching class lessons can inspire pupils to new heights

There is a whole world of possibilities to enrich learners’ experiences in STEM, from visits and visitors to exciting outdoor projects.  Part of the challenge for teachers is to find out what is available, another is to gain necessary confidence or knowledge of how to do it, and another can be to obtain funding to pay for something out of the ordinary.  It is not the case, however, that enrichment activities have to be conceived as bolt-on extras.  A well-conceived strategy can combine “special events” with an underpinning rationale which focuses on enriching everyday teaching, so that learners are getting more than just the occasional “light relief”.Given all the other pressures teachers of STEM subjects are under, it is entirely understandable that they may question whether they can afford the time and resources to “do” enrichment.  Reflecting for a moment may make them realise that the question is more a case of whether they can afford not to do it.  Research and inspection evidence shows that genuine and tangible benefits arise for learners as a result of something as simple as, for example, taking the learning outside: this is one form of enrichment.  However, doing this without any kind of strategic plan or rationale is unlikely to produce the lasting levels of engagement that are so sought after.

Here are five easy things you can do to begin enriching science in your school:

1. Check out the STEM directories at www.stemdirectories.org.uk/ to find out what activities and schemes are being run around the UK to enhance the science curriculum.
2. Look at the Royal Society Partnership Grants scheme at royalsociety.org/education/partnership/ to see how you could obtain up to £3000 to run an innovative STEM-based project at your school.
3. Check out some web-based possibilities for improving collaborative and creative learning by visiting cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Resources+for+Teachers
4. Find out who can come and deliver some exciting and stimulating presentations or demonstrations at your school by visiting www.sciencelive.net
5. See what additional practical activities you can use by visiting practicalchemistry.org, practicalphysics.org, and practicalbiology.org.

Inspection evidence can be sourced on pages 20 and 30 of Ofsted’s ‘Successful Science’ report which is available at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/successful-science

A useful overview of the need for an enriched science curriculum can be found at http://www.scienceinschool.org/2006/issue2/rir

This is just a selection of ideas for enriching science teaching.  If you have any ideas or activities which would benefit the wider science teaching community please comment here and we’ll tweet the updates to the wider world.