Final exams don’t officially start until tomorrow, but both my classes got an early start today.

AP Physics: Free Response

I’m using a practice exam from the College Board as my final this tri. Students worked on the free response section, minus one problem on waves and one on circuits since we haven’t done those topics yet. I was relieved by how many students said the free response wasn’t that bad. While they worked, I was mulling over a multiple choice problem about the change in speed of a projectile and played around with the problem in Desmos.

Physical Science: Written Final

I decided to use the final exam period for students to present their engineering projects, so today they took a written final. Just like first trimester, I’d like to shift to something more deeply rooted in the scientific practices.I really like the two-stage lab exams I’ve done in physics, but that is different enough from the multiple choice other 9th grade teachers do that I would need to talk some other teachers into it. I need to come up with some ideas for easy grading and for managing a lab exam with up to 42 9th graders in the room. I might pitch a lab-based final to the other 9th grade teachers and see if they’d be up for some summer curriculum writing to work on those issues and design some good labs.