Matt Perks

@dodiscimus.bsky.social

1160 Followers 2552 Following

11-18 physics teacher, now at University of Southampton in Initial Teacher Education. School governor. Mostly edu-guessing. By teaching, we learn!

Chart showing 1.8% of deaths in Western Europe are heat related, and 0.7% of North American deaths are heat related.
Whole Class and individual activity – using electrical components. Introduce the components that students will use in circuits, thermistors, diodes, filament lamps, light dependent resistors (LDR) and light emitting diodes (LED) and discuss with students the action of these components and how the resistance of the components can be changed under different conditions.
This is a bar chart titled "Key Stage 4." It displays data for 17 different ethnic groups. The bars are sorted in descending order. The horizontal axis at the bottom is labeled: "Percentage of FSM pupils achieving grade 4 or above in English and Maths." (FSM stands for Free School Meals). Most bars are dark blue. The "White British" bar is highlighted in maroon. Data Points (From Highest to Lowest) Chinese: 85% Indian: 68% Bangladeshi: 68% Black African: 62% Any other Asian background: 61% Pakistani: 57% Any other mixed / multiple ethnic background: 52% Any other Black background: 51% Any other White background: 51% White and Asian: 50% White and Black African: 49% Black Caribbean: 42% White and Black Caribbean: 38% White Irish: 38% White British: 36% (Highlighted in maroon) Irish Traveller: 17% Gypsy, Roma and Traveller: 11%
The story goes that Thamus said much to Theuth, both for and against each art, which it would take too long to repeat. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
Provide students with thermistors, LEDs, and filament lamps. o Ask students to measure the resistance of each component at room temperature using an ohmmeter. o Gradually change the temperature using a heat source or by cooling with ice packs and observe how resistance changes.
Chart showing about 20% of people think environmental regulations should be tightened (30% Green and SNP voters); about 80% think they should be reduced to speed up delivery of infrastructure. The most popular option is case-by-case assessment whether full regulations need to be applied.
The rate of permanent exclusions has been on a downward trend since 1995/96. The rate has decreased from 0.17% in 1995/96 to 0.08% in 2009/10, the year of the most recent data. • The peak number of permanent exclusions was recorded for the 1996/97 academic year. In this year there were 12,670 exclusions from the whole school population. The most recent data highlight that the number of permanent exclusions has more than halved to 5,740 for the 2009/10 academic year.
The compression challenge is partly about deciding which simplifications are generative and which become misconceptions. A maths-first system will tend to over-atomise science into labelled chunks and under-represent the multi-scale relations, deep explanatory themes, and role of productive simplification that make science knowledge cohere.
Image of the cover of Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle.
Many FT readers will already know the simple rule of thumb: divide 72 by the growth rate, and that is how many years your money will take to double. Seven per cent will double in about 10 years; 10 per cent will double in about seven.
Bar chart comparing 32,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity and 1,400 TWh of biofuels produced on the same land area.
Obesity stats by English region
Researchers tested this idea by having kindergartners play a game similar to Chutes and Ladders, with a 10 by 10 array of numbers from 1 to 100 on a game board that players were to progress through, with a spinner determining the number of spaces to move on each turn
At Kingston Crown Court on Wednesday, December 3, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was also disqualified from driving for 13 years with an extended retest required. An aggravating factor in Marston’s sentence was his previous driving endorsements, including six penalty points for using a mobile phone while driving. At the time of the collision, he had accrued 12 points on his licence, avoiding a ban due to the risk of potential hardship.
The potential clashes of rights between different protected characteristics must surely have been obvious to those who framed the Equality Act. What did they expect to happen in these cases? It is hard to believe they really thought that faith schools serving the most segregated religious groups would willingly start to teach sex education lessons that included homosexuality and gender reassignment. I have never learned whether they thought such tensions could be resolved. But it was necessary to review all our HR policies to identify and remove all instances of overreach where well-intentioned elements had been inserted that nonetheless went beyond the Equality Act.
Chart showing estimated effect with CIs for different job attributes. Values are in the text of the main paper.
Flexibility over working hours Fixed working hours Ability to shift start/end times forward or back by one hour Complete flexibility over working hours, within demands of the role
Figure 1 Example of a choice task in the UK undergraduate survey experiment. Then I'm afraid it's a detailed table that's an image in the original and I'm not typing it all out.
Sample Size (N= unique respondents) 871 UK 1242 USA. Subject Area Social Sciences/Humanities/Law (%) 32.8% 26.7% Biological/Life Sciences (%) 31.9% 26.2% Mathematics (%) 20.1% 14% Physics/Engineering (%) 1.7% 13% Creative Arts/Media (%) 8.3% 10.7% Education/Teaching (%) 4.1% 5.1% Other Physical Sciences (%) 1% 4.3%
Para with many spelling, grammar, and structure problem.
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Sorry, I can see this copy-paste is a bit crap, but... Table 1. Hodder Access test results Table headings are: FR or FR + T group Average/Poorer reader Standardised test time Reading age mean (in months) Standard error FR + T Average + reader 1 177.059 2.250 2 180.490 2.924 Poorer reader 1 111.300 2.541 2 128.088 3.302 FR Average + reader 1 175.950 2.261 2 177.851 2.939 Poorer reader 1 112.817 2.510 2 128.280 3.262 FR, a fast read of challenging texts; FR + T, teachers having a theorised knowledge of reading and associated pedagogy.
Why is it only now, we have lifted the cap on student numbers and 100,000 more will go to university in the next 2 years, 700,000 more to further education. So today I set a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century.
The Benz Patent-Motorwagen ("patent motorcar"), built in 1885 by the German engineer Karl Benz, is widely regarded as the first practical automobile
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I’ve spent so much fucking time on developing this stuff. They’re really good as units, things that I’m proud of. Now I’m looking at what AI can do, and I’m like, what the fuck do I do? I’m really at a loss, to be honest. (T10).
One unit chair recounted testing AI detection software with their own writing: ‘There’s no point putting anything through AI to say, ‘Did you write this?’ Because we tested the system already and we wrote something and we put it through AI and said, ‘Did you write this?’ They said “Yes”. We go, “Well, no. You didn’t because we did”. You can’t even trust that sort of thing’ (T4).
The science curriculum should encourage the use of a wide variety of teaching methods and approaches. There should be variation in the pace at which new ideas are introduced. In particular, case-studies of historical and current issues should be used to consolidate understanding of the ‘explanatory stories’, and of key ideas-about-science, and to make it easier for teachers to match work to the needs and interests of learners.
As another 30,000 trainee teachers gear up to begin treading the boards at the front of classrooms around the country, probably feeling a little like actors thrust in front of a critical audience without much of a script, it seemed a good time to weigh in with some gratuitous advice, to add to the ever-increasing pile that no doubt everyone is pushing from all directions.
Two columns comparing 9-1 and A*-G. There's a line across between 4-3 and C-D to indicate comparison at that important mid-point.
Scatter graph of PISA maths performance against SES fairness (by PISA meaure). From least fair to most fair I've highlighted Switzerland, Austria, Germany (all below average on fairness) Denmark, UK (both above average fairness).
"While I cannot create a custom diagram with photos, names, and years in office, I was able to find an image that represents the US presidents since Herbert Hoover." Followed by correct named images and then an accurate list of names and dates.
Students are baffled by teachers who want them to deliver a message via a marathon run when you could just send a text message. Teachers are baffled by students who want to get a taxi round a marathon course and expect a medal at the end of it.
Graph showing Belief that Britain was right to vote to leave the EU. Starts 46% right, 42% wrong in 2016. Now shows 30% right, 55% wrong in 2025.