This was the last week of school for seniors! Since they are around 90% of my students, this was the last week of instruction in my classes. Next week, the juniors in my classes will have time to finish anything they still need to for my class or prepare for finals in their other classes.

Physics: Pendulum Practicals

This week we did two lab practicals using pendulums. First, we had students determine the length of a pendulum using only a stopwatch, which went really smoothly. Next, we had students figure out where to start a buggy so that the pendulum bob would collide with a passenger in the buggy. The big thing I noticed was students treating the period of a pendulum as three different equations, depending on which variable they were solving for. This fit with a general pattern this year of students struggling with using math in physics. While I think the unique challenges of last year are a factor, I think it would also be worth looking at our curriculum to see how we could do a better job of not just using math, but helping students develop a conceptual understanding of the math we are using. I won’t be able to work on that directly next year since I will be out of the classroom working as a high school science content specialist, but I’d like to think about how I can support teachers interested in that work. There will also be a high school math content specialist, and I think it will be worth having some conversations with him to think about how our departments could collaborate.

AP Physics 1: Final Projects

Students met with me about their final project drafts, then presented them to the class. I feel like while these students are phenomenal in small groups, I’ve struggled to build a whole-class community this year. During the presentations, however, there was a lot of joking around from both presenters and the audience, and several presentations included references to Throckmorton, who appears in many of our problems. I think we had more of a whole-class community this year than I realized, it just looked different than in previous years. It was really nice to have that so apparent on our last day together.