Under The Microscope

LONGMAN WRITE-ON NOTES: PHYSICS FORM SEVEN STUDENT NOTES, by Chris Smaill; Longman Paul, 1995; 108 pp; $11.95

Reviewed by David Rodda

Teaching physics for the first time this year, I would have loved to have discovered Chris Smaill's Write-on Notes in week one. The notes will enable the student to spend more time listening and understanding the concepts rather than furiously scrawling notes, and will free up class time to work on investigations and practicals.

The purpose of the notes is to act as a support and supplement to other texts and a teacher's notes, with the students adding their own ideas, comments and extra notes. They come as a pad so the students can file them with exercises and other work.

The notes are well written, with student objectives at the start of each section, and the content covers the present 7th Form syllabus, plus the core, and some optional, content of level 8 in the new physics curriculum, with worked examples and questions.

I tried a page out on my class and some of the comments included:

"Explained things in the right amount of detail." "Right nice!" "Extended your knowledge of the topic in a simplified form."

A valuable resource that I would recommend for students and teachers that will enable more time to be spent on the "doing" and "thinking" instead of the writing! My 7th Form will definately be using it next year!

David Rodda teaches physics at Avonside Girls' High School