1 July 2019
Alongside partnership work with local school pupils, the ASP also hosts and runs professional training for teachers on behalf of several organisations, including the Institute of Physics, the Royal Meteorological Society and Practical Action.
Ten local teachers attended a Lead School workshop on practical work in Physics recently, exchanging ideas for making practical work a central part of all teaching and learning in Physics. A full day workshop on weather and climate was run for fifteen teachers from schools across the south east by Dr Sylvia Knight, Head of Education at the Royal Meteorological Society.
This included the kind of basic training given to weather forecasters as well as an opportunity to make measurements and predictions of the local weather on a pretty wet day in Abingdon.
One of the participants commented later 'Thank you for such a super day yesterday; so informative, seamlessly run and a beautiful location. It was a real treat'.
The ASP now has an annual fixture at the University of Leicester for the last day of the PGCE Science course, delivering a session for the brand new teachers on inspiring STEM activities beyond the curriculum.
The students spend the last morning of their course learning about ideas for science clubs and running pupil research projects and finish with a hands on activity called 'Stop the Spread', originally designed by Practical Action's education officer with the help of volunteer Lower School pupils in 2016.