This was supposed to be a four-day week, but an impending winter storm means we will be starting our winter break a day early.

AP Physics 1: Energy Bar Charts

This week I introduced students to energy bar charts and we spent a lot of time working and whiteboarding problems. Since we had two rounds of whiteboarding in a 3-day week, I asked students if they wanted to change it up from mistakes whiteboarding, but they were adamant that mistakes whiteboarding helps them learn. I was more concerned about whether they would be up for engaging in that much mistakes whiteboarding than whether it would be useful, so happily went along. I am really glad that they are seeing the value in making, analyzing, and discussing mistakes for their learning. I also had some great conversations with students this week where they talked about the growth they feel like they are making in this class, which is fantastic. That is a great note to go into winter break on.

Physics: Newton’s 2nd Law

This week felt more awkward with this course. We had a quiz on Monday that had been pushed from last week due to a snow day. Then the plan was to start the lab we’ll be doing on Newton’s 2nd Law. We are planning to use the motion encoder tracks, but students haven’t had any hands-on experience with them yet and haven’t used any velocity vs. time graphs in a few weeks. To address those issues, I put together an activity where students reviewed position vs. time and velocity vs. time graphs using the motion encoder tracks. That seemed to really help students feel comfortable with the equipment and set up what they’ll need to remember to find acceleration in the lab. That left us with today to start the lab. I dragged my feet on the introductory discussion rather than starting data collection, then picking it back up after two weeks off. We’ll see what I think of that decision when we come back from break!