The Big Ideas in Physics and How to Teach Them: Teaching Physics 11–18

Aimed at new and trainee physics teachers particularly non-specialists, this book provides the knowledge and skills you need to teach physics effectively at secondary level. It provides the historical narrative of the Big Ideas in physics, explaining the significance of each idea and its place in scientific history. Each Big Idea comes with a set of lesson activities that get your students to think alongside clear explanations of how they can be used. It also discusses the models used to explain complex ideas and suggests methods of assessing learning. Including a wide range of teaching strategies, this book will help you to become a skilled physics teacher who gets great results.

The Big Ideas in Physics and How to Teach Them provides all of the knowledge and skills you need to teach physics effectively at secondary level. Each chapter provides the historical narrative behind a Big Idea, explaining its significance, the key figures behind it, and its place in scientific history. Accompanied by detailed ready-to-use lesson plans and classroom activities, the book expertly fuses the ‘what to teach’ and the ‘how to teach it'', creating an invaluable resource which contains not only a thorough explanation of physics, but also the applied pedagogy to ensure its effective translation to students in the classroom.

Including a wide range of teaching strategies, archetypal assessment questions and model answers, the book tackles misconceptions and offers succinct and simple explanations of complex topics. Each of the five big ideas in physics are covered in detail:

• electricity
• forces
• energy
• particles
• the universe.

Aimed at new and trainee physics teachers, particularly non-specialists, this book provides the knowledge and skills you need to teach physics successfully at secondary level, and will inject new life into your physics teaching.