The 2023 Chronicle

SCIENCE

Head of Department: Mr Clint Sliedrecht Teaching Staff: Mr Matthew Higginson, Mr Edward Jeffrey, Mr Nkanyiso Ngcobo, Mr Grant von Mayer Interns: Mr Sinethemba Mabaleka, Mr Brandon Peel Lab Assistance: Mr Raymond Duma t has been a year of great energy and hard work from boys and staff alike in the Physical Sciences Department. We are fortunate to have knowledgeable, passionate and experienced staff in our department. We are now also the department with more Housemasters than any other. This, after the appointment, at the beginning of the year, of Mr Matthew Higginson to Housemaster of Baines. This brought the number to three along with Mr Nkanyiso Ngcobo (Housemaster of Pascoe) and Mr Ed Jeffrey (Housemaster of Mackenzie). We thank Matthew for his 13 years of service as HOD Science. He has left the department in excellent shape. Also on the staffing front, we have welcomed two new interns, Mr Sinethemba Mabaleka and Mr Brandon Peel, to the department this year. They have had a positive impact on the boys they have taught and we look forward to further contributions from them in the coming year. We continue to optimize the use of our state-of-the-art teaching spaces in the Science Block. This facility, opened in 2018, has now been in use for more than five years. The daily business of teaching and learning for teachers and boys alike means that we spend so much time in our classrooms that we, naturally, often don’t pause to appreciate the aesthetic nature of these areas. It is always a welcome reminder when visitors to the school or parents on open days meet their son’s science teacher and are taken aback as they admire the beauty of this remarkable facility. We have had staff from the physical and life sciences departments of two prominent schools, Kearsney College and The Wykeham Collegiate, visit this year to view our Science Block, as they are considering the upgrading of their own teaching and laboratory spaces. We have beamed with pride as we have shown our guests around this purpose-built facility. We have also been working tirelessly to improve our use of cutting-edge technology in our lessons. As a department we have implemented the use of Microsoft OneNote resources in all classes. This has served as a fantastic repository of textual and audiovisual resources that the boys can use in and out of the classroom. We have also seen the introduction of 2-in-1 laptop devices and WiFi-enabled projectors for our teachers to teach with. We gratefully acknowledge the vision and strong leadership of our Deputy Rector: Academics, Mrs Win de Wet, and Senior Academic, Mr Gerry Noel, as well as our Head of Digital Strategy, Mr Gavin Erasmus, and his team for these innovations. They have proven enormously valuable to our teaching of a subject that many of our boys find conceptually challenging. Furthermore, this year we have seen our first investment in data-logging equipment. We have invested in equipment from the world leader in this area, the American company Pasco (not to be confused with the House Pascoe). I envisage this being the first of such investments in equipment that will transform much of our practical work and bring us up

to the cutting edge, in particular in the area of physics lab work. One exciting piece of equipment that we have already invested in is the powerful Smart Cart with its built in accelerometer and gyroscope, allowing the measurement of position, velocity, acceleration and many other quantities. There is a vast array of physics and chemistry topics, much of it abstract theory, that this equipment will help the boys learn. In terms of our boys’ achievements, we were delighted with Frederick Waller’s A (80%) for the 2022 IEB Further Studies Physics examination. This is the first A achieved by a Michaelhouse boy in this demanding additional subject and has no doubt confirmed Frederick’s aptitude in his chosen career path of engineering. This was only the second year that IEB Further Studies Physics has been examined and we look forward to future cohorts of our top physicists doing us proud. Also doing us proud were many of our participants in the National Science Olympiad. Twenty-seven C Block boys wrote the Grade 10 Physical Science Olympiad and excelled, taking home the silver medal for the second-placed school countrywide. The top five achievers in Grade 10 were Roelof Rossouw, Reily Elliot, Oliver Bruyns, Justin Higginson and Ross Markham. In the Grade 11 Physical Science Olympiad, nine boys entered. Nathan Strachan and Kian Moses were our top two achievers. Nathan has been shortlisted for possible selection to represent South Africa at the 54th International Physics Olympiad (IPHO) to be held in Isfahan (Iran) in July 2024. We congratulate Nathan on this fantastic achievement. The final results achieved by the 2022 Physical Sciences Grade 12 group were not as pleasing as preceding years. We are hopeful that the class of 2023 will do us proud with their results, and to this end the staff have exerted themselves above and beyond the call of duty to help our A Block boys fulfil their potential. We have had an extra science support programme running on Mondays and Wednesdays (the senior off-sport days) throughout the year. The attendance at these lessons has been pleasing. It is a major priority of our department to see our already impressive matric science results (especially when compared to IEB national averages) soar to new heights. We would like to see many more boys converting B symbols to A symbols and Cs to Bs. To this end, we are already implementing measures that I believe will help us achieve this. A few of these measures include a greater standardization of internal assessments across each Block. All boys are being assessed at the same high standard in what we have termed “Yellow Assessments”. We have also been trialling a reworked and accelerated syllabus year plan to cover certain sections in B Block rather than A Block. The aim here is to afford us more contact time in lessons before and after the trial examinations in A Block in order to consolidate the whole syllabus and ensure that boys are better prepared from an exam technique aspect. We believe these and other measures will contribute significantly to our boys’ performance in the final IEB examinations, but only time will tell. I am very proud of our matric teachers, who have consistently been accepted as IEB markers to mark the Physics and Chemistry examinations in December over many years.

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