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August is here...results day is looming

August is here...results day is looming

When I was a teacher, there was no bigger feeling of relief than the moment I left the school on the last day of the summer term. Of course, I loved the job, but by that time, I was exhausted, stressed and overstretched. It had finally come. In my first three schools, we would gather in the staffroom, or the library and listen to the farewell speeches and then probably head to the pub. In the last school I worked in, a private school, the last day of term was not the last Fri

What I learned doing A level physics part 2 - how to use online videos to help

What I learned doing A level physics part 2 - how to use online videos to help

I obtained my original A levels in 2001. When I did, the main source of information were my teachers, my textbooks and some revision guides. The internet at the time had no really useful A level websites to speak of (GCSE Bitesize had just started) and there was nothing like YouTube or any site that had tons of videos on it. When I entered A level physics in 2018, I expected that the knowledge I had obtained through my degree and teaching would carry me through a lot of it, b

Summer stimulation

Summer stimulation

I had a real Malcolm Gladwell phase a few years back. In his book, Outliers, he stated that there was an achievement gap between poor and wealth families. However, this gap did not come about during the school term, but rather during the holidays. This is because the wealthier families did more educational activities with their children than the poorer families during the holidays. So, this post is stating that some stimulation over the summer is in order. It doesn't have to

The Last Minute List

The Last Minute List

One of the things I (re)learnt when doing A level physics is that the day before and the morning of an exam can be a crucial time, but it is difficult to know what to do with that time. I shouldn't be learning anything new in that time(!) I found that doing practise questions, whilst useful, is also time intensive and I couldn't cover the whole specification. A useful thing I discovered was to make a last minute list - this is a list of things I need to remind myself to do, o

Some parts of the specification are not taught as much as others - here's why

Some parts of the specification are not taught as much as others - here's why

The specifications for science exams are big and some things will get more focus than others. Some aspects never get taught very much at all, and some are not taught well consistently every year. Here are some reasons why... Changes to the specification: When a science specification changes, only about 5% is different. In a way, this makes it harder to write new resources than a 100% change, because the resources are almost sufficient, but not quite and it's easier to spot a