Background

I teach 4 classes of IB Diploma Physics, 2 first year classes that are combined HL and SL and two second year classes, one HL and one SL. What  have done on this site is to publish everything that I do with my students, it has taken (and is taking) a lot of time to get everything onto the site so I am obviously in here quite a lot but I don't just use the editor interface I also use it every day with my classes, here is a breakdown of what I do.

 

Lesson plans

I've been teaching physics for more than 30 years but still need to spend a couple of minutes before class thinking about what it is I am going to try to get across. To get myself into gear I look at the lesson plan, this helps me to remember the syllabus material we have to cover, any TOK moments to mention, the animations that I used before and any videos that might be useful. I teach with a SMART board so keep the page open in class so I can quickly link to any videos etc. I don't share the lesson plans with my students.

Each lesson  make new SMARTboard notes which are saved as pdf files on our college intranet, I never recycle old notes although student have access to them.

 

Tests

I try to start every class with a 10 minute test on the material that was covered the previous lesson so I print this off from the webpage. The printer is in the room next to my lab so I have to unlock the door to get the tests, my students have developed a Pavlovian reaction to the sound of my keys. When I mark the tests I sit in front of my computer so I can use the online marking scheme.

 

Practicals

My students all have laptops when they do labs so I don't need to print of worksheets, they work from the worksheet on this website which I have given them access to on their student pages.  They do not have access to the teachers notes and marked examples.

 

Internal Assessment

This website contains a lot of information about IA, checklists, exemplars use of ICT, uncertainties etc. I encourage my students to refer to this when writing up their practicals, they find it quite useful.

 

The Exam

The exam hints and worked answers are used by my students when they revise for the exams. They have access to the questions and markschemes on the school intranet but the markschemes don't have full explanations. My student don't have access to the paper I will use for the trial exam, May 2010 time zone 1 (they don't have access to this page either).

 

Multiple choice tests

These are to help the students in their revision for the exam. I have made them all available to my students so they can do them when they feel like it. Some of them do the quizzes in between classes. They like the animations. They should always read the feedbacks even when they get the answer right, there are some little presents in there.

 

The Blog

The blog is a record of the physics things I think of during the day. A lot of them are the sort of interesting observations that could spark off an extended essay so I have tagged all of these with an EE tag. I will encourage my students to look through these when its time for them to start thinking of topics. I also record any interesting physics things I read in the paper (the weekly guardian) or see on the TV (Top Gear). I hope that students and teachers will find these interesting and may sometimes lead to a discussion in class.