Saturday 15 March 2025 | 9am-4pm
Secondary CPD
Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Abbey Place, Faversham, Kent, ME13 7BQ
Cost: £10
Kent & Medway
The Kent Festival of Physics is back for the seventh year being delivered in collaboration between The STEM Hub and Physics Partners with special thanks to Colyer Fergusson Charitable Trust for their generous funding. Everyone is warmly invited to this full day of training and workshops for all teachers of physics (whether specialist or not), ECTs, trainees and technicians.
There will be sessions covering key physics topics for KS3, KS4 and KS5 with hands-on practical activities and ideas for making your teaching even more engaging, all delivered by expert physics teacher trainers.
It’s a unique opportunity to network with colleagues from across the region and find out about resources available locally. Whilst the programme is primarily designed with teachers in mind, technicians are more than welcome to attend and may benefit from the more practical workshops.
Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff FREng FRS will talk about his experience of using YouTube videos to bring science to a wider audience and to inspire a new generation of scientists. Physics teacher Simon Poliakoff (Sir Martyn’s son) will then share a variety of practical strategies to effectively use videos to support physics teaching in schools and colleges including using videos to reduce cognitive load. The father-son pair first delivered this talk at the 2025 ASE conference.
Bio of Martyn:
Sir Martyn is the face of the YouTube channel Periodic Videos www.youtube.com/@periodicvideos founded in 2008 with 718 videos, more than 286 million views and over 2000 watch years since 2012. He is a Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He has taught Chemistry at universities since 1970 and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has won prestigious UK and international awards for teaching and for popularisation of science. Currently he teaches sustainable chemistry and the potential impact of chemistry on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He was the instigator of the 2019 UNESCO International Year of the Periodic Table. He also lectures widely to schools in the UK and abroad. From 2011-16, Sir Martyn was Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society.
Bio of Simon:
Simon has worked as a physics and science teacher for over 20 years in a variety of settings from Ethiopia to Hitchin. During his career he has been involved in a wide range of programmes to support non-specialists teaching physics as well as delivering whole school CPD aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning. He is currently an Ogden Trust Senior Teacher Fellow working on sharing ideas for effective practicals and demonstrations.
As well as a YouTube channel of physics videos www.youtube.com/@SimonPoliakoff he has recently started a website www.teachphysics.org through which he shares creative commons physics resources and teaching ideas.
A full day of Physics workshops featuring keynote speakers, TeachMeet, TechMeet, exhibition, free raffle, and complimentary lunch and refreshments.
Workshops include:
We hope you can join us for this amazing day of physics.
The day has been made possible to the thanks of the following supporters including: Physics Partners, Colyer Fergusson Charitable Trust, Christina Astin, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, the amazing facilitators, The STEM Hub and Canterbury Christ Church University.
The booking link below will take you to Canterbury Christ Church University's payment gateway (shop.canterbury.ac.uk) where you can pay online and book your place.