This is a spreadsheet I created, which enables you to effectively plan across the entire year with ease. The spreadsheet is designed to be robust enough to be useful with most subjects and, if used regularly, can significantly reduce planning time. Better yet, the spreadsheet makes it virtually impossible to forget to set or collect homework.
If you are like me, you do not enjoy the task of trying to decide grade boundaries for assessments. If you are a Head of Department, you may be responsible for deciding grades that go on reports, which are sent home to parents. It is vital these are representative of the attainment of the students.
I have made this spreadsheet to make the process less painful.
Simply enter a suitable distribution of grades into the ‘Curve to fit’ section (I use the distribution of results from the previous cohort’s public examinations), then copy the percentage scores for the students into the ‘Scores (%)’ section. The Grade boundaries appear under ‘Boundaries’. Some schools use subgrades (dividing each grade into three), so subgrade boundaries are also produced (listed in ascending and descending order, to suit your preference of index-match or vlookup formulas)
Of course, it can be a pain writing your own formulas to generate the grades, so the formulas are also produced, which can be copied and pasted (as text!) into your own spreadsheet. Don’t forget to change the cell to which the formula refers under ‘Cell’.
If you need to see how it works, I’ve uploaded a YouTube video to demonstrate.
HOW IT WORKS: the spreadsheet assumes a normal distribution for all data. The normal distribution standard deviation and mean are determined from the data you enter under ‘Curve to fit’, which is then used to generate matching grade boundaries for the ‘Scores (%)’ data, which should produce a similar spread of results. Doing all that statistical crunching manually can take far too long, so I wrote this spreadsheet to speed the process up.
Here is a video I made and a worksheet I put together to help students understand the concepts of time dilation and length contraction in special relativity. I hope this helps.
In this 12-part video series, I describe the history of the standard model, and explain some of the key features. This is suitable for students studying A Level Physics and would be really useful for revision. At just 1 hour and 47 minutes, the series isn’t long enough to cover absolutely everything, but it does cover the essentials.
An interactive diffraction simulation. Students can make measurements from the screen to confirm the equations for diffraction from a grating or two slits (or more). The spreadsheets can produce displacement plots or intensity plots.
You can customise where the slits are, and what the wavelength is. Units are arbitrary.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets.
Technical points:
The huge one takes a few seconds to load. If the graphics are glitchy, press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh them.
A worksheet generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions. The questions are mathematical, students have to decide what equation to use, rearrange it and substitute the numbers to come to an answer. Hints are given on the sheet, but do not need to be given to students.
To generate new questions, press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac).
If you wish to test only a selection of formulas, you can choose the range of formulas to include from the list on the Settings sheet.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets.
A question generator that displays an image of a Vernier scale and asks the student to say what measurement is given.
To generate new questions, press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac).
The answer appears on the ‘Answer’ sheet. In the ‘Settings’ sheet you can choose whether to force the generator to quantize measurements to match the resolution of the intrument, or not.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets.
I analysed years of past papers, reviewing circuit topologies to create a worksheet generator which will produce questions that test all of the circuit skills students need to succeed. Diodes in forward and reverse bias are included, as are resistors in series and parallel, and cells in series and parallel.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
Students must find the current through and voltage across each component. The answers are provided in the ‘Answers’ sheet (tab at the bottom). If you wish to force the spreadsheet to use components that you choose, you can do that also.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a worksheet generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Approximately ten lessons of work based on the AQA A Level textbook. The order roughly follows the chronological order of particle physics discoveries, with essential tangents included.
These go a little bit beyond the AQA A Level course, including a little bit about gluons and quantum chromodynamics, but only to support students’ understanding of why there are three quarks in a baryon and a quark and an anti-quark in a meson.
A worksheet generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions. The questions are mathematical, students have to decide what equation to use, rearrange it and substitute the numbers to come to an answer. Hints are given on the sheet, but do not need to be given to students.
To generate new questions, press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac).
If you wish to test only a selection of formulas, you can choose the range of formulas to include from the list on the Settings sheet.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets.
This question generator produces worksheets including numerical questions about Boyle’s law, Charles’ law, Gay-Lussac’s law (pressure law) and the Ideal Gas law. It is customisable so that you can select the units to be included in the questions and increase the difficulty of the worksheet by including a larger selection of the laws.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a worksheet generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
This one is a question generator that displays an image of a micrometer scale and asks the student to say what measurement is given. It can produce any random measurement to be determined by the student.
To generate new questions, press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac).
The answer appears on the ‘Answer’ sheet. In the ‘Settings’ sheet you can choose whether to force the generator to quantize measurements to match the resolution of the intrument, or not.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets.
This spreadsheet generates worksheets to help students practise key skills with log graphs, such as reading from logarithmic scales and finding decay constants for exponential decays. These skills are now being examined at A Level.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a worksheet generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
This spreadsheet generates questions where two substances are placed together and allowed to reach thermal equilibrium (assuming no heat loss), and students have to calculate what the equilibrium temperature is. Questions can be quite simple, such as the same substance and no state changes, or much more complicated, such as different substances and only some of one of the substances changing state.
This spreadsheet generates full worked solutions too, to help students understand how to solve these types of problems. Teachers can use ‘debug mode’ to choose their own bespoke questions, if they wish, or allow the spreadsheet to generate random questions.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a question generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
This spreadsheet generates questions where three forces are in equilibrium and students have to use the principles of vectors to determine a missing quantity, such as the angle of one of the vectors or the magnitude of one of the forces.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a question generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
These spreadsheets generate questions where two or three forces produce moments in equilibrium around a pivot. Pupils have to calculate the missing quantity.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. These are question generators, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
This spreadsheet generates questions where pupils have to use Fleming’s left hand rule to determine the direction of either the current, magnetic field, or force on a wire.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a question generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.
This spreadsheet generates questions where pupils have to determine the colour of light that is either reflected from a coloured object, or transmitted through either one or two coloured filters. Every possible combination is included from the colours red, blue, green, cyan, magenta, and yellow.
All of my drills are fully Excel compatible spreadsheets. This one is a question generator, which can be used to generate an unlimited number of unique questions.
Just press F9 (PC) or Cmd+= (Mac) to refresh the spreadsheet and generate a new question.