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The TOPS Summer Institute is a full time, one week professional development program to familiarize teachers with the concepts, equipment, procedures, and curriculum integration for a series of physics labs. Teachers become familiar with equipment to support activities in mechanics, optics, wave motion, electrostatics, and circuits. They will discuss and plan inquiry-based, framework-specific experiments along with the safety and classroom management skills needed to utilize computer-driven equipment and hands-on activities in the classroom. In light of the recent emphasis on technology in the classroom, many schools have acquired equipment similar to the TOPS equipment. The TOPS Summer Institute will provide teachers with the knowledge to use that equipment and successfully integrate it into their classroom laboratory activities.
For many schools, however, the investment necessary to provide this equipment to their classrooms is not possible at this time. To overcome this problem, the TOPS program makes equipment available to trained, interested teachers. Subsequent to the Summer Institute, teachers are eligible to participate in a second phase of the program, during which the TOPS resource teacher, an experienced, credentialed, mentor teacher, brings the TOPS equipment in our specially outfitted van to the participant's classroom and assists in carrying out the TOPS labs with students. During these TOPS van visits, laboratory management and equipment usage in the classroom environment are modeled and discussed, and the presentation of advanced science concepts through laboratory experiences is made possible.
Follow-up support in the form of seminars, a newsletter, training for student TAs and access to the TOPS lending kits make this a long-term program.
For current TOPS Physics teachers under construction
Physics Lab Standards Alignment (Microsoft Word document)
TOPS Physics was made
possible by
support from the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
TOPS Homepage | Physics Program