Home » Beginning Physics Teachers
Beginning Physics Teachers
How can this website help you as a beginning physics teacher?
Professional Development, Course Planning, Topic Planning, Lesson Planning, Assessment and Exam Revision
Professional Development
The AIP (Vic Branch) Education Committee offers an In-service and Mentor program for 'first year out's, teachers returning to physics after an absence of several years and for teachers of other disciplines who have been asked to take physics.
Also of benefit is the Committee's regular email newsletter, it contains information about forthcoming events for teachers and students, useful resources for teaching physics and news stories from the world of physics that might be of interest to teacher ansd student alike. Back issues of the newsletter can be found at The News Page, along with a file of still relevant highlights from the last five years of newsletters and files of all the news stories sorted by Area of Study.
Presentations from recent Physics Teachers Conferences
Type | Filename | Filesize | |
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143 kB | ||
A document of demonstrations by Colin Hopkins, Trafalgar High School and Rob Braidwood, Balwyn High School. Presented at the 2007 Physics Teachers Conference. | |||
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60 B | ||
Audio of presentation by Colin Hopkins and Rob Braidwood. 60mins. | |||
Course Planning
Documents for the 2009 - 2012 course. These include worksheets and resource material from the regional professional development workshops held in 2008. There is also material from recent Physics Teachers Conferences and some useful websites.
Topic Planning
Each Area of Study has its own page of information: Text resources, Audiovisual resources, Classroom activities, Assessment ideas, IT applications and Applets.
To access a page go to 'Teachers', then move to 'VCE resources' and then to either 'Units 1 & 2 resources', 'Unit 3 resources' or 'Unit 4 resources'
Lesson Planning
If you go to 'Teachers', then move to 'VCE resources' and then to 'General Resources, you will see a long list of categories of resources:
- Colin Hopkins CDROM Colin Hopkins is an experienced physics teacher, who for many years has provided support to teachers and students alike. He has spoken several times at Physics Teachers' Conferences and In-Services on variations on the theme of 'Tips and Hints for Beginning Physics Teachers'. At these talks he has given participants a CDROM of the resources he has compiled and personally prepared. Colin has kindly made this material available to be put on this website. This is being progessively done during 2010.
- Applet Websites: A list of links to popular websites that contain many applets.
- Problem solving: A list of commonly used physics problim books.
- Useful Websites Listed under the categories: Historical, Women in Physics and General
- General Texts: A list of commonly used physics texts.
- Practical Activities: A list of publications focussing on investigations and practical activities for physics.
- Communication: A list of sources for text-based comprehension activities.
Assessment and Exam Revision
Many of the webpages of the Areas of Study have examples of assessment tasks. See under 'Topic planning' above for how to locate these pages.
Detailed solutions to the VCE physics exams for Units 3 and 4 from 1999 onwards are available. The webpage also contains the most recent Chief Assessor's Report, the grade points since 1999 and information of marking prionciples.
Advice to students on revising physics and preparing for exams is also available.