AP Physics: Design a Practical

I decided to try something new for my review this year and tasked each group with picking at least one model from this tri, and designing a lab practical. Today, they worked on coming up with an idea and trying it out in the lab. I’m having a lot of fun seeing what students are coming up with; I need to make sure I get photos of all of them tomorrow. The main challenge was I did a lot of running around between classrooms to find lab equipment for students, so next time I’ll try to do a better job of having most of the equipment we’ve used in the room already.

Using impulse to find mass

Using balanced force to find mass

Physics: Review

Students worked on some review worksheets from the Modeling Instruction curriculum. As students worked, there were several I talked to who are feeling very overwhelmed right now, so we talked a little about the worst case scenario as a sort of pep talk. I will probably take a few minutes tomorrow to do that with the whole class.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz Jigsaw

Groups presented the whiteboards they worked on yesterday. Most students no longer had their old quizzes, which made it tough for them to take full advantage of this; next time, I might give them a full set of blank quizzes as a review packet. I asked groups to pick what they thought were the hardest problems off their quiz to whiteboard, and most groups picked problems that the majority of students got wrong on their original quiz, which was great!

Final exams are this week, so all three of my classes are doing some review the next few days.

AP Physics: Model Summaries

I gave each group one of the four models we’ve covered this trimester, and asked them to whiteboard examples of the key representations for their model, including diagrams, graphs (with notations about what has physical meaning), and equations. Once whiteboards were ready, we took a few minutes to do a gallery walk. A really cool surprise was just about every group included some force representations, regardless of which model they were whiteboarding.

CAPM summary

Physics: Model Summaries

My physics classes also worked on model summaries, but I used a different structure. First, rather than giving each group a different model, I had the whole class whiteboard the same model, then we did a gallery walk before moving on. Second, to make things a little more concrete, I asked each group to come up with a scenario where the model applied, then to sketch representations and give some written descriptions. I think a lot of students didn’t see as much value in this as I’d hoped; I have a lot of students who have been trying to memorize the diagrams, rather than using them as meaning-making tools, and spending time thinking about the relationships between the diagrams doesn’t contribute to that approach. With a new tri starting next week and most of my students either switching hour or switching teacher, I’ve got a good opportunity to think about how I can re-calibrate my classroom culture towards more meaning-making.

CVPM summary

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz Jigsaw

I gave each group an old quiz and asked them to work through it. Once groups started to finish, I asked them to pick the hardest problem or problems and prep a whiteboard with their solutions. The big challenge is I had a lot of students checking out today, which is pretty typical for what I see during finals week with this course; for most of my students, whether or not they pass is more important than their letter grade, and are aware that a final that is 10% of their grade will have little impact on whether they pass. I need to spend some time thinking about final exams that students are more likely to find more intrinsically meaningful.

A problem that almost everyone got wrong on the quiz