I am running a small tutorial (extra lessons) group - for pay, good pay :) - as part of the Mill Hill notschool idea. At A2 level ie final year of UK school at 18. Target A grades for all three researchers, who are well motivated but uninspired at their good day school.
In the first session we looked at the power of models like Newton's cradle for conservation laws, motherboards for capacitors, and a plasma ball without a transformer for fun and as a project to reduce 15V to 12V for next time. We covered the outstanding questions in gas laws and thermo, used pairs of hands to model the cylinder of a four-stroke cycle and the water molecule's degrees of freedom before simplifying to a monatomic molecule, looked up U=W+Q in the text book and saw it was just energy conservation. We set the learning of laws and equations in words, symbols and units for the next module, took home a questionnaire on what were the hard bits and easy bits, and registered a page each for collaboration in googledocss.
We chose mechanics for the first module, partly because all were confident in it, partly because I want to check all laws are understood, memorised and usable. But mainly so all can see the strength of knowing the basics backwards before we meet part-known newish material.
At this speed we will cover the 5 or so modules of the two-year course in 6/7 hours.
Hope the troops want to come back. It was for me a fun, edge of seat evening.
