AP Physics: Plickers & Quiz

Between now and the AP exam, my plan is to spend Fridays on multiple choice practice, followed by a quiz. We used Plickers again, with students first voting on answers individually, then talking to a peer before voting again; its really interesting to see how their answers shift with this process. I picked several problems where thinking in terms of a system’s center of mass is useful, and students seemed to grasp that idea, though we will need to revisit to make sure it is solid. There were a lot of great conversations along the way.

Earth Science: Earth’s Resources

I ended up doing some pretty traditional notes to address the learning targets on Earth’s resources. I’d love to put together an activity where students have to argue whether a certain mine or pollution source is worth it (come to think of it, the proposed PolyMet mine near the BWCA would have made for a great Socratic seminar or philosophical chairs), but I ran out of time to prepare something for this year. My students didn’t mind the notes; it turns out several of them had a test next hour in AP Human Geography over a lot of the same material.