Day 65: Multiple Choice, Elevator Wrap-Up, & Mystery Tubes

December 15, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Multiple Choice

Today was a quiz day. This tri, I’m making quizzes the last thing we do for the day to build in a natural time limit. Before the quiz, we used Plickers to go over some multiple choice questions that were tricky on the final exam. I had one class where scores on the final came up, and that seemed to put a damper on some of the conversations. I’ll have some conversation with them on Monday to reinforce that we are after everyone’s success.

plicker

Physics: Elevator Wrap-Up

I gave students some time to do a summary table from Casey Rutherford’s elevator situations. Afterward, they took their quiz on Newton’s 2nd Law.

Chemistry Essentials: Mystery Tubes

Today was a quiz day. About half of my students take their assessments elsewhere due to IEPs or 504s and most of them need the whole hour, but the students who stay in the room usually only need about half the period, so I’ve been doing nature of science activities once all the students in the room are done. Today, I pulled out the mystery tubes. Compared to last trimester, my current students were less interested and quicker to look for answers online. I think if I’m going to do it early in the trimester, I need to spend a little more time than I did today introducing it and brainstorming strategies.

mystery tube

Day 64: LOL Diagrams, Elevators, & Volume

December 14, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: LOL Diagrams

We did the mistakes game again today (which my AP students now think of as standard whiteboarding in physics) for some problems with conservation of energy calculations. To avoid getting bogged down in the algebra, where most of my students are pretty strong, I had them put their mistake in the LOL diagram or writing the conservation of energy equation. Most groups worked on an accurate solution before they made their mistake, and one group did a nice job of setting up an equation for a problem where 10% of a baseball’s energy is dissipated before it reaches the peak of its path.

lol neat approach.jpg

Physics: Elevators

Students whiteboarded their work on Casey Rutherford’s elevator situations worksheet. A lot of students struggled conceptually with the direction of the net force, but seemed to resolve that by the end of the hour. I’m trying to lower the social risk of whiteboarding to get more engagement, so I gave each problem to two different groups, then had them meet and come to a consensus on a solution. Afterward, students did a gallery walk of all the whiteboards. We also discussed a video I made of a balance on an elevator to reinforce the worksheet.

Chemistry Essentials: Volume

Students filled geometric solids with water to find a relationship between the volume and the amount of water they could hold. I need to put some thought into how I introduce the lab; in particular, I don’t think my students have much concept of why this relationship is worth looking at. I know I can make use of that as we move into density, but I’m not sure how to frame the lab so they see a purpose in it up front.

Day 63: Conservation Problems, Board Meeting, & Reaction in a Bag

December 13, 2017December 13, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Conservation Problems

Students started working on solving problems with conservation of energy. There was a fantastic moment when I overheard a student say “I don’t understand number 3 yet; I need to draw my LOL diagram.”

Physics: Board Meeting

Students discussed the results of the 2nd Law lab from earlier this week. I put more pauses into the whole-group discussion than usual for students to talk with their lab groups about some question and was very conscious of asking for claims the group, rather than the individual, had come up with and made explicit those claims were rough drafts. This seemed to ease some of the fears about speaking up.

Chemistry Essentials: Reaction in a Bag

Students reacted calcium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and bromthymol blue in a Ziploc bag. to see another example of conservation of mass in a reaction that forms a gas. Next time, I might combine this lab with the Alka Seltzer one to make a more involved exploration of whether gas has mass. Aside from this feeling more like a true chemistry lab than the Alka Seltzer one (students definitely connect goggles with “real” chemistry), that may give the opportunity to go into questions such as which was the better method of capturing the gas or whether all or some gasses have mass.

Day 63: Bar Charts, Board Prep, & Particle Diagrams

December 12, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Bar Charts

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems for the mistakes game. In both my classes, students were generally excited to do the mistakes game and I contributed almost nothing to the discussion, which was fantastic. Afterward, we took a few minutes to use some thermal camera images to see examples of energy dissipated by friction, including a photo I took of my car after driving it.

Physics: Board Prep

I’d planned to have the board meeting today, but we ended up just prepping whiteboards today since enough groups had issues with their data that I think it would have been tough to have a good discussion. I tended to let poor data slide last tri, since it was easy enough to recover during the board meeting, but I think a lot of groups are counting on being “that” group during the discussion. I think having those groups re-do their data collection today helped set the expectation that they shouldn’t plan on being “that” group.

Chemistry Essentials: Particle Diagrams

Students worked on a worksheet to practice drawing particle diagrams. The students who’ve been engaged in the labs so far were able to breeze through the worksheet and had some good discussions along the way. I’ve got more students than last tri, whoever, who checked out during those activities and had a lot of trouble with the worksheet as a result. I need to think about how I will interrupt the vicious cycle that is starting for those students.

Day 62: Systems, Newton’s 2nd Law, & Does Gas Have Mass

December 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Systems

Students worked on a Modeling Instruction worksheet that emphasizes how changing the system changes the LOL diagram. A lot of students very naturally connected this to the SOS diagrams we’d done earlier in the year and how changing your system can affect whether there is any impulse.

Physics: Newton’s 2nd Law

Students used a half-Atwoods machine to collect data for how the force on a cart affects its acceleration. I ended up wishing I’d spent a little more time on the pre-lab; a lot of groups lost track of what they were measuring and how that connected to the purpose of the lab. Since I’m seeing low engagement during whole-class discussions, I’m thinking about how I could have students do some of the pre-discussion in their lab groups, instead.

Chemistry Essentials: Does Gas Have Mass

Students measured the mass with a reaction of water and Alka Seltzer to decide whether gas has a mass. They did the reaction once in an open test tube and once with a balloon on top. While the balloon clearly leaked, there was significantly less loss of mass with it in place. I didn’t ask for particle diagrams on the lab handout, but I think that would have helped students think through what they expected and why.

Day 61: Bar Charts, Mistakes Game, & Burning

December 8, 2017December 8, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Bar Charts

We discussed the results of yesterday’s lab in order to define kinetic energy, then I showed them the derivation for elastic potential energy. Since we’d already defined change in potential energy as the area of a force vs. displacement graph, I think I could have put that derivation on students. Afterward, I introduced students to LOL diagrams and set them to work sketching bar charts.

Physics: Mistakes Game

I love Kelly O’Shea’s mistakes game, but I’ve been having trouble getting my physics students comfortable talking as a whole class, so I decided to try lowering the stakes. I had them prep whiteboards as usual, but then they presented to another group, rather than the whole class. There were a lot of great conversations between groups and students were much more comfortable speaking up. Afterward, I gave students time to do a gallery walk of the post-discussion boards.

Chemistry Essentials: Burning

Students burned steel wool on a balance to observe the change in mass. Afterward, we used Post-It notes to make histograms of the change in mass from both yesterday’s labs and the burning. Last trimester, I skipped the class histograms, but I think the helped this group to meaningfully interpret their results. I also got excited when a student brought up conservation of mass before I did, which I don’t manage as often as I’d like in this course.

Day 60: Kinetic Energy, 3rd Law, & Melting Mass

December 7, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Kinetic Energy

To introduce kinetic energy, I had students work through a Pivot Interactives activity to find a relationship between the starting height of a puck and its velocity at the bottom of a ramp. I ran out of time to have a pre-lab discussion yesterday, so tried to have one in the computer lab today. I had more students then usual struggling with what to measure or what to graph, and I think that was because a lot of them started the activity rather than fully engaging in the discussion. Once they got rolling however, students warmed up to the interface pretty quickly.

Physics: 3rd Law

We collided carts with force sensors to check the predictions students made yesterday. I spent more time than usual talking about why I asked them to make predictions I know are likely to be wrong since confidence has been such an issue for students this year.

Chem Essentials: Melting Mass

Students continued the Modeling Instruction mass and change labs. Today, they melted ice and mixed sodium carbonate with calcium nitrate; a lot of students really liked that reaction and were observing close enough to notice the precipitate causing the cloudiness. I added a mini-exploration of the zero button on the balance, which I was pretty happy with. A lot of the students in the course struggle with mathematical reasoning, and taking a few minutes to play with the zero button and the readings on the balance seemed to help make its purpose more concrete.

Day 59: Energy, 3rd Law, & CER

December 6, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Intro to Energy

Students measured the average force and the displacement required to give a cart the same change in height on several different ramps. They sketched the force vs. displacement graphs, which I used to introduce gravitational potential energy and work.

Physics: 3rd Law

We ran out of time to hit Newton’s 3rd Law during last tri’s unit on balanced forces, so today we dove in. I showed students a pair of carts, then asked them to draw interaction diagrams and free body diagrams for various collisions, as well as to predict which cart will experience a larger force. One group gave me a hard time about how deadpan I was when they asked if their prediction was right, so we talked a little about Clever Hans the Math Horse.

Chemistry Essentials: CER

As part of the follow-up on yesterday’s lab, I introduced students to the CER framework. I had students identify the claim and evidence in a car commercial, then come up with some potential reasoning for the evidence before they started a CER on whether the mass of steel wool should change.

Day 58: Scoring Guide, Broken Circles, & Steel Wool

December 5, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Scoring Guide

The tri 1 final exam included some free response problems off past AP tests, so today I gave students the scoring guides and some student samples to make sense of the scoring before letting them see their own tests. One of the problems was problem 3 off the 2016 free response and, inspired by a participant in Greg Jacob’s AP Summer Institute, I used rubber bands to make a bumpy ramp so we could actually try out the experiment in the problem. The class had some good discussion about key takeaways, like the importance of explaining EVERYTHING. Students also noticed that the student samples with high scores had a lot of marking the text.

Physics: Broken Circles

I struggled to get the class culture I wanted in my physics class last trimester and, with students shuffling between hours and about half coming from the other physics teacher, the new tri is a great opportunity to try again. Students worked on a broken circles activity from Designing Groupwork by Lotan & Cohen, then we had some discussion about what it took to succeed and how that fits with what effective groups in physics look like.

Chemistry Essentials: Steel Wool

This course is two trimesters long, and we only offer the second half during tri 3, so I’m restarting the first half of the course with a new group of students. Students measured the mass of steel wool before and after pulling it apart. To help students focus on good lab practice, I had them do the experiment once with minimal instructions. Then, we had a brief discussion to get at some sources of error before students completed the lab again with a handout and a paper plate to help catch stray bits of steel wool. Just like tri 1, I made a class histogram with Post-Its, but the results were much nicer this time.

Day 57: Tri 1 Reflections

December 1, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today is our second day of finals, so its a good time for me to look back on the trimester.

AP Physics

My biggest change this year was starting with momentum. I like that momentum is my students’ default lens and they are very naturally looking for how new topics connect to it. My students also see calculus as less of a prerequisite than previous classes since no one had a leg up on the first unit. However, the impulse lab I did was very rough; I think there was just too much going on for the first quantitative lab. Next year, I’m thinking about putting constant velocity before momentum so I can introduce key skills in a simpler context.

I also started giving students at least two in-class assessments over each learning target. I like that this pushed back against the test and forget that a lot of students are used to and it helped normalize reassessment as part of the learning process. As a result, students seem less stressed about my assessments and I’ve seen more students taking advantage of out of class reassessment.

Physics

We started the year with a two week unit on designing experiments and interpreting graphs. I’m not thrilled with how the unit went; I rushed through the labs we did, partly to keep up with the other physics teacher and partly to avoid spending too long on the unit. I think students would have benefited more from the unit if I’d fleshed out the pre-lab and post-lab discussions, even if that meant we didn’t do every lab originally planned on. I shortchanged the predictions students were supposed to make with each lab, and I think that helped give my students the expectation that their graphs are a box to check rather than a tool to use. The mass vs. volume lab was also a tricky place to start since students had to calculate the volume and it was tough for them to pick out relevant control variables. Next year, if I do this unit, I will probably start with bouncy balls, instead.

Its also been a much bigger challenge to get students comfortable with the modeling approach than in past years. Going into tri 2, many students are switching hours and about half of my students will be coming to me from the other physics teacher, so it is a good time to build a better foundation. I’ve been reading Designing Groupwork by Cohen and Lotan, I’m going to try starting the new trimester with one of their cooperative training exercises. I may also do the mystery tubes or a similar activity to reinforce the value of meaning-making over answer getting.

Chemistry Essentials

This was my first time teaching the first half of Chemistry Essentials. I started switching the curriculum over to a version of Modeling Instruction, and am happy with where that is going. The particle diagrams in particular have been incredibly valuable in helping students wrap their heads around what is actually going on. The modeling curriculum has fewer chemistry-looking labs than my department typically does, so one of my challenges going forward is to work on integrating more of those. I also had or expand some topics to match state standards, and those are definitely much clumsier. Finally, I’d like to get a better storyline in the class; right now, each unit feels pretty distinct from the others. I want to spend some time this summer working on understanding how the big ideas are related and revising my materials accordingly.

stoeckel180

Author: Marta R. Stoeckel