Trying to cheer up Thomas, who has had a bad day, Patrick introduces the concept of Active Instruction. Also an update from Charlie and our first contact through WhatsApp!

S02E05 Timestamps

• Thomas has an announcement @ 00:44
• Thomas has had a bad week @ 02:00
• Update from Charlie @ 04:45
• Patrick introduces Active Instruction @ 09:02
• Contact on calculators via WhatsApp @ 26:31
• Please help with Ionising Radiation! @ 32:37

Summary

A bad day for Thomas made the team (Thomas, Patrick and Robin this week) reflect on the nature of teaching, often lonely and sometimes a bit manic. Every teacher has moments of anxiety and imposter syndrome and it’s important to give yourself a break as they say in New Hampshire. Charlie is loving his science and his year 7 group is clearly loving working with him. Charlie is one of those heroes teaching physics despite not having a science background. It’s lovely to hear his enthusiasm permeating his classroom and the joy he takes in the questions his kids are asking. If you are teaching physics and it’s not familiar to you, thank you and I hope you enjoy it as much as Charlie. Active instruction takes centre stage as the team discuss prompting kids to think and guide their discussions on physics. Finally Matt Bowman joins us from Peru and we talk calculators.

Patrick’s Links

• TIPERS (Ranking Tasks) (on Amazon. Disclaimer: we get a small cut if you buy it)
• Patrick Kaplo’s Energy Card Sort
• Brian Frank card sorts

Ways to teach… Ionising Radiation

Please share your ideas about teaching Ionising Radiation. Tweet us @physicstp with the hash tag #tptpir , use the contact form below, our Instagram account @physics_teaching_podcast or email us contact at thephysicsteacohingpodcast dot com! After tweeting about this we already have seen a brilliant video about dealing with radiation issues in Russia (Thank you David Cotton @Newmanphysics).

Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp .  You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using  the address given in the podcast (if we remember), you could even email us an autio file if you are feeling really keen.

Music

• Season 5: 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