Where's my class?

Last september I wrote about the problems we were having with overcrowding in the labs.
This year things are much better on that front and the majority of classes are small enough to fit in nicely. The way that has been achieved is by creating more sets, which has led to a different issue.

We now have an extra year 9 set and an extra year 11 set on top of what we had last year. In physics we also have one more upper 6th set. Obviously these extra classes have to be taught somewhere, but increasingly that is not in the science block.

We have 9 labs spread over 3 floors. Right now there are 13 science lessons on the timetable. Clearly they don't all fit in the science block, so where are they all? Well, we are having to use maths, psychology and business studies rooms which means that there are science lessons in just about all four corners of the school site. Business Studies is about as far from science as you can get whilst still being on site!

Some teachers are better than others at managing this game of 'musical classrooms'! When I get their requisitions for the week ahead I am occasionally having to point out that the practical they want isn't actually going to be possible in the room they will be teaching in.

I'm sure they'll get it eventually. Won't they?

Adapting dynamics trollies

Your basic dynamics trolley looks something like this:

We mainly use them for experiments on velocity or acceleration and generally use a light gate for the measurements. In order to break the light beam you have to attach some sort of 'sail' to the back of the trolley which up until now has generally been a piece of cardboard stuck on with sellotape or blu tack.

That was never really an ideal way to do it. For starters it looks a mess, and the sails are often not stiff enough and will bend or fold over and not break the beam as cleanly as we want. I've been trying to come up with a solution to this problem for ages and it suddenly struck me a couple of weeks ago.

I had a load of these clips in a drawer which I didn't really have a use for. I think they're for holding pipes or cables. My thinking was, if I attach the clips to the back of the trolley then they could hold and support the sail. Even better, I had some 10cm squares of hardboard which we used for an old ISA which I thought would make ideal sturdy sails.

Initially I just glued the clips to the trollies to see if the concept was sound, and the teachers loved it! I've now screwed the clips on and hopefully our velocity practicals will be a bit smoother now.

The finished article

ps. It's now half way through lesson 1 on tuesday. Still no requisition sheet from astroboy!

Requisition sheets

The concept of the requisition sheet or book should be one familiar to all senior school science teachers. It's the method by which they let me, the technician, know what equipment they need for each lesson.

My requisition book

There are various methods that I have heard of, but the one I prefer is for each teacher to give me a copy of their timetable with their requirments written in for each lesson. I then take the sheets and transfer all the information into my requisition book which is a day to a page and I can see instantly what the days lessons are looking like.

I like this method because as I'm transferring the information into my book I can see where there might be clashes or rapid turnarounds and it helps me plan my week.

This only works though, if the teachers get their sheets done in time. The official science departmant policy is that all requisitions should be handed in by Thursday lunchtime of the preceeding week. I give a little more leeway than that and have told my guys that Friday lunchtime is ok. But how many of them manage that?

Well, I have 4 teachers this year. 1 of them doesn't do much practical, but when she does, she manages to plan well in advance. This week she came and wrote in my book on thursday. NQT did his sheet on friday with a number of trips to the prep room to check what we have available. This is great, because it means that he has only asked for things that are actually possible. HoD did his sheet some time on sunday and emailed it to me. Not a huge amount of help since I didn't see it until this morning.

And then there's astroboy. Just lately he seems rather more interested in the observatory and astronomy club than the mundane business of teaching physics. It's currently half way through lesson 1 on monday morning and I have yet to see any sign of his requisition sheet. I guess this means he doesn't want any equipment this week?!

The prep room travel agency..

... is open for business.

Can it really be that time again already? Yup, I'm afraid so. Today we book the flights for this year's CERN trip. We've got the largest group yet - 32 of us altogether including the college chaplain which should be 'interesting'.

We're meant to be heading back to the Vatican Observatory in early december as well, so I expect I'll be booking more flights in the very near future.

An offer I can't refuse...

The lovely people at Timstar currently have a 'Back to School' clearance brochure out with an extra special offer - if you spend £100 from the brochure they'll send you free biscuits!

Never one to pass up a freebie I duly placed my order, along with a load of other stuff from the regular catalogue. Sadly, the majority of the items I wanted from the clearance brochure are already sold out but they're going to send me the biscuits anyway! Hooray for Timstar!!