Research in Schools

Last Tuesday I took part in CERN@School and TimPix teacher development day NV501

The event introduced physics teachers to using state of the art technology from CERN, through the CERN@school kit and access to data from the TimePix detectors.  CERN@school is a project based around the CERN@school kit and access to data from TimePix detectors.

We were inspired by Prof Becky Parker, who has built up the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS). She has an amazing track record of facilitating school pupils’ independent research, enabling them to collaborate with career scientists.

At the heart of the program is the TimePix radiation detector.  I am looking to use one of these to collect data that may be useful to research scientists.  Through the collaboration, I expect the interaction with scientists will raise pupils aspirations and engagement with science/STEM career paths.  As Tamsin is working on climate modelling, I thought the data may be a higher-order addition to the climate model, which may have a small impact on the model, but which may not be added due to existing resource constraints.  I see the main aims of the IRIS program as giving pupils free rein to engage in free-range research, in extra-curricular time.  If a scientist has a subsidiary project that could be done by the pupils, it may be a useful support to guide the pupils.

Prof Parker mentioned Dr Kirkby and the CLOuD project, but I thought I should do some background reading and ask Tamsin’s help.

There is some funding available from the Royal Society and IRIS may also be able to get funding from other sources.  The Royal Society offer £3,000 for a School Partnership Grant for example, the current deadline is Monday 1st August, so it may be something we work towards for similar date in 2017.

I don’t have much experience of writing research / funding proposals, especially as I wouldn’t know what work would need to be done or what would need to be funded.

I work in Mill Hill, NW London.  I think a collaboration with a London University would be easiest for face-to-face meetings, but given the nature of the widening range of scientific work, I think links with scientists further afield via Skype etc could be worth trying.

Let me know what you think, what should I do next?

Thanks!

John M. @jm8997 | jm8997(at)gmail.com | LinkedIn profile

 

 

Medical physics

I’m spending some time in hospital and I can’t help thinking about the applications of physics I experience during my stay. I’ll try to add to this post in the next week.

Blood pressure, pulse rate, O2 saturation, CT scan, MRI scan etc.

Blood pressure monitor

I have been using the Fukida Denshi DS7100 Patient Monitor to monitor my blood pressure. This measures via a pressure cuff, blood pressure, and via a pulse oximetry sensor, pulse rate, O2 saturation.

https://www.fukuda.co.uk

Click to access ds_7100.pdf

https://www.fukuda.co.uk/products/sitefiles/ds_7100.pdf

https://www.seca.com/en_gb/company/stories/details/article/how-do-blood-pressure-monitors-really-work.html

Women in Physics posters for schools

Ding!

I’ve updated my poster pack for my lab that has 36 mini posters of successful women in physics. I wanted the girls who came into the lab to see a future pathway for themselves right there. I wanted them to walk into the room and think this is a subject for them and a career for them as much as anyone else. These women are not in the textbooks.

Unusually for most wall displays in classrooms, students (and visitors) stop to read the stories. Not only that, when I’m telling the tale of a discovery I can quickly point to the relevant one.

I took the photos from the internet so I can’t profit from it so happy for it to go far and wide. There are two up on each A4 so just print each page in colour and cut out to make your display.

The idea was to…

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Habits

Filling the pail

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle —they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”

Alfred North Whitehead

I was in the habit of going to the gym. At 5.30 am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I would haul myself out of bed, dress in the dark, grab a water bottle and head to Anytime Fitness. I disliked the start but felt good by the end.

Then, one day, I turned up and the gym was closed for refurbishment – I must…

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Teacher Tapp (app for teachers)

Over the past year, since leaving education, I have followed the growth of TeacherTapp. The app asks 3 questions each day (from 3:30pm), showing the results of previous poll, with a link to a blog post.  The app has had a facelift recently, and I would encourage teachers to take part each day.  Each Monday the curators post insights and analysis from the previous week.

How to improve reading fluency

Thank you for this. I enjoy reading with my son, and he is beginning to recognise words (he is 4!).

One minor typo- it took me a long time to figure out what you meant, then I realised s is next to d on keyboard!
Syllable word reading
Show the children a longer word and explain that words can be broken down into smaller sections called syllables. Break the word into smaller parts and >ass< 1 syllable each time.

Teaching and being a leader

‘WCPM has been shown, in both theoretical and empirical research, to serve as an accurate and powerful indicator of overall reading competence, especially in its strong correlation with comprehension. The validity and reliability of these two measures have been well established in a body of research extending over the past 25 years (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Shinn, 1998).’
(PDF) Oral Reading Fluency Norms: A Valuable Assessment Tool for Reading Teachers. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250055778_Oral_Reading_Fluency_Norms_A_Valuable_Assessment_Tool_for_Reading_Teachers

In my first blog here I spoke about the importance of reading fluency and the need for it to be assessed. I am going to begin this second blog with what I think is a cautionary warning. Whilst the evidence is strong that fluency is crucial in helping children achieving comprehension -it is only one aspect. Other aspects of reading need developing:

• Knowledge of the wider world, including history, geography the arts and much…

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Managing my behaviour management part 1 (5 strategies) @mathsmrgordon

Teach innovate reflect

Follow @p4ssionform4ths project for progress and news on our maths year 5-8 transition development and upskilling of maths teachers and leaders.

This is the first of two blogs on how I manage behaviour:

Part 1: 3 agreed rules, SLANT, Golden iPhone, micro-scripting, show call.

Part 2: Lateness, Low level disruption, Key routines, “Picking up your own tab”

Behaviour management is not something I have seen a lot of teachers blog about. I really liked Ben Newmark’s blog about how he deals with a new class at a new school. These raw, personal blogs really help other teachers. I think behaviour management as a skill is something that people are ashamed to admit they need help with. “What… you can’t even manage your class?” is probably one of the things that a teacher would be ashamed to admit. It is very personal. The truth is, that it IS a skill. It…

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Novices, Experts and Everything In-between: Epistemology and Pedagogy

A Chemical Orthodoxy

The concept of “novices and experts” answered a lot of questions for me. For a long time, I had been finding it difficult to understand why my students made simple mistakes, couldn’t “apply” their learning to new areas and couldn’t understand exactly what a given verbal or written question was asking for.

Put simply, the idea is that when a learner is first starting out in a particular domain (e.g. chemistry), they are considered a novice. Their knowledge is fragmented and disconnected from the rest of the knowledge within the domain. As their knowledge builds up, they progress towards becoming an expert: someone whose knowledge is broad, deep and extensively connected.

There are a number of classic lab-based experiments in this field, the findings of which are summarised here as:

1. Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
2. Experts have acquired a great deal…

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Connected physics – LinkedIn recruitment

I joined the LinkedIn network to connect with colleagues, teachers I worked with from other schools and others I had worked with, including former pupils who now have careers of their own.  Since my early years of teaching, I have tried to show current pupils that there are often careers in physics/science generally, often linked to what they are studying in my classes.

Some of my most memorable experiences have been with Oracle, the Educational Development Trust and The Goldsmiths’ Company.

I can perfectly understand that LinkedIn is a very useful service to discover new job opportunities, but I am still astonished at the number of recruitment agents who have connected with me in the hope of getting me to move to a new job.

Should I need to look for another job, my first site will still probably be the TES.  I guess that relatively few teachers use LinkedIn so there are fewer of people like me who meet the agents’ criteria, so I get disproportionately more offers.  In other sectors, outside education, I guess there is a more competitive edge, where employers, recruiters and employees/candidates are all looking to seek/find each other.  I do not want to “humble brag” but as a physics teacher, I am aware that there seem to be many vacant positions, irrespective of the calibre of the candidates.

I would recommend that many more colleagues join the network, to increase the sharing of ideas, suitable job opportunities and connection requests!

Past papers, different specs– it’s all physics!

What do you do when you exhaust your supply of revision/practice materials for pupils who may now be revising for exams?

My Irish language teacher taught us the phrase “Cleachtadh a dheanann máistreacht” (Practice makes mastery, or the common alliterative English phrase “Practice makes perfect”).

I often use materials from other exam boards, such as past papers or specimen papers, to give pupils further practice, or to challenge them beyond their carefully ring-fenced specification content.

Today I am using British Physics Olympiad papers and trying to separate different questions and then aggregate them into different topic areas appropriate to our current specification.  I found this has this has already been done here; BPhO Question Bank

 

I’d be interested to hear what you have tried and feedback on how well it works!