IHETC School
Physics and chemistry — Lower secondary
The pupil understands the phenomenon and freezes when isolating a variable in a formula. The conclusion is that they dislike physics, when the problem is unconsolidated algebra. Reworking the physics chapter achieves nothing: you must go back to the source, in the other subject.
What is at stake in this subject
The first subject where mathematics becomes a tool serving something else. A pupil weak in algebra discovers their gap here, often abruptly, although the difficulty does not come from physics.
- Matter, mixtures and transformations
- Electricity and circuits
- Motion and forces
- Energy and its conversions
- Measurement and uncertainty
They fail physics because of a maths gap
The pupil understands the phenomenon and freezes when isolating a variable in a formula. The conclusion is that they dislike physics, when the problem is unconsolidated algebra. Reworking the physics chapter achieves nothing: you must go back to the source, in the other subject.
How the tutor works on it
The tutor explicitly separates the two difficulties: it first checks understanding of the phenomenon without any calculation, then handles the mathematical tool separately. Conflating them loses a pupil who only had one of the two problems.
- It changes angle when an explanation does not land
- It never gives an exercise answer
- It has the pupil check rather than correcting them
- It goes back to the missing prerequisite, even from an earlier year
Parents' questions
Are experiments possible remotely?
Some are, with household materials, and the rest go through filmed experiments and simulations. That is a real limit: handling equipment yourself has no substitute, and we do not claim otherwise. Understanding mechanisms and measurement method, however, can be fully trained.