Shawn Brooks, Manager of the OAPT Contest, teacher at UTS
sbrooks@utschools.ca

Sandy Evans, Editor of the OAPT Contest, teacher at Northview Heights Secondary School
Sandy.evans@tdsb.on.ca

This is a reminder about the upcoming FREE OAPT Physics Contest on May 22^nd. This year, for the first time, the contest will be open to BOTH Grade 11 AND Grade 12 students due to the generous support of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto.

There will be two separate divisions. Students who have started to take grade 12 physics (SPH4U), or have already completed it,  should select 'Grade 12'.The 'Grade 11' division is for students (of any grade) currently taking, or completed, Grade 11 physics (SPH3U) but who have not yet begun grade 12 physics.


http://oapt.ece.utoronto.ca/register/

After the contest, when students check their results, the Grade 11 results will include students’ scores, rankings and percentiles. The Grade 12 results will show the students’ score, but the ranking and percentiles for Grade 12s will show N/A.

A reminder that the contest is available in both an online version and a paper version and may be written at any time during the day on May 22nd. If you are choosing to do the online version it is strongly advisable to make sure students have downloaded the contest or have it on a USB key well in advance of the contest. That way they will be ready as soon as the teacher (contest coordinator) inputs their start code.

As mentioned in a previous newsletter, the students have 60 minutes to complete the contest which has 30 multiple-choice questions, with one or two of the questions based on the previous years’ Nobel Prize in physics or current events in physics. The questions range from easy to difficult, conceptual to mathematical and abstract to concrete. It is a reasonable challenge for all Grade 11 SPH3U and Grade 12 SPH4U students.

Instructions on how to enrol and practice questions from previous years may be found on the following link: https://oaopt.wildapricot.org/contest.

On that page you will also find a bank of over a thousand multiple-choice questions organized into categories. These questions can be used throughout the year for assessment ‘of’, ‘and’ and ‘for’ learning.

Tags: Contest