AP Physics 1

Day 113: Board Meeting, Spring Period, & Representing Reactions

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AP Physics 1: Coulomb’s Law Board Meeting

We had a board meeting to discuss the results of yesterday’s lab. Students were quick to buy into the inverse square relationship and to recognize how their results support that like charges repel and opposites attract. I haven’t found a great way to get at the meaning of the slope, but its at least pretty intuitive that the amount of charge should affect the size of the force.

ap wb

Physics: Spring Period

Students collected data to figure out what affects the period of a mass oscillating on a spring. Today was one of the days when the progress my students have made in designing an experiment was very apparent, which made it a lot of fun to listen to them plan and troubleshoot their approaches.

spring

Chemistry Essentials: Representing Reactions

Students practiced translating between reaction equations, statements, and particle diagrams. One of the big challenges is my students were in very different places, especially when it came to particle diagrams and switching between names and formulas. About a third of my students took Chem Ess A with me last tri, so they were just extending some fairly recent learning. Another third took Chem Ess A with me tri 1, so have seen these skills, but haven’t used them in a few months. The rest of the students came to me from other teachers who don’t use particle diagrams and several haven’t had chemistry since last year, which gave them a much higher mental load. Most tables had a mix of students from each group, which meant there was a lot of peer teaching today, which helped with the variation quite a bit.

Day 112: Coulomb’s Law, Spring Force Revisited, & Skew Dice

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Today was our first day back from spring break and the first day of a new trimester.

AP Physics 1: Coulomb’s Law

I am a part of the Pivot Interactive’s Chemistry Fellows program.

We dove right in with a lab on Pivot Interactives to discover Coulomb’s Law. We’re going to be cutting it pretty close on squeezing everything in before the AP exam, so I was much more direct than usual about what needed to be done by the end of the hour and how long I expected tasks to take, and that seemed to help students meet the timeline I had in mind. I need to make that a habit for the next few weeks.

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Physics: Spring Force Revisited

We’re getting ready to start vibrating springs, so today we revisited Hooke’s Law. I asked students to make some predictions about how the slope of two different springs should compare before collecting any data, which was tricky since they haven’t thought about what the spring constant actually means for a while, but I think they got where I want them to be.

Chemistry Essentials: Skew Dice

A lot of my students either haven’t had chemistry since trimester 1 or came to me from the other Chemistry Essentials teacher, so I treated today like the first day of school and tried to set a tone for the term. I tasked students with writing a CER to answer whether skew dice are fair. In the past with this activity, I’ve had some trouble convincing students they need a lot of data, so I started by asking students to collect evidence that a regular dice is fair before we got out the skew dice, and students pretty easily recognized they needed a lot of rolls with the regular dice to get a distribution that makes sense.

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Day 111: Tri 2 Reflections

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Today was our second day of final exams. While my students work, I’m taking some time to reflect on this term.

AP Physics 1

I’ve been moving a little bit slower than I have in past years, so the week we lost to cold and snow is going to make it tough to squeeze everything in before the exam in May. Looking ahead, I’ve got some ideas to integrate a review of linear mechanics into circular motion and rotation, so I think we’ll be okay, even though I won’t have as much dedicated review as in the past. I feel like I skipped a lot of activities that I did in past years, so I need to think about what slowed down the pace. I think part of the problem is this is the one course where I’m not collaborating with another teacher, which means its the prep I’m the most likely to let slide when I’m crunched for time. I need to make sure I’m managing my time in a way where I stay on top of AP going into the home stretch.

Physics

For the first time, I’ve been generating random groups for students almost daily, and I’ve been very surprised at how effective that’s been. Students tell me they feel like they actually know everyone in the class and I’ve noticed a very strong sense of class community. I need to start expanding the random groups into my other courses.

Chemistry Essentials

I’m continuing to really enjoy co-teaching this course. Its great to have another perspective on how to make the material accessible to the students in this course and even on how to best support individual students who are struggling.

This tri, we did a lot of work on making sure students had a strong conceptual foundation for what they were doing in the class. While we made a lot of good progress, I’ve noticed that while students may be able to connect a particle diagram to a written answer or a calculation, they often struggle to connect their conceptual understanding to the real world. Especially as we move into the second half of the course, which includes a lot of stoichiometry, I’m thinking about what it will look like to help students see how what they are learning relates to things they can actually see or measure.

Day 110: Final Exams

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Today was day 1 of final exams. The classes with odd hours met today and the rest will meet tomorrow.

AP Physics 1: AP Practice Exam

Students took a practice AP exam from the College Board. They did the free-response earlier this week, and the 90 minute final exam period was perfect for the multiple choice. I really pushed that I’ll be entering this into the gradebook very generously partly because the AP exams tend to have low percentage scores and partly because I want to use it very formatively. My two goals are for students to experience an (almost) complete AP exam and for me to see what topics I need to make sure we revisit before the real exam.

Physics: Lab Practical

For the first half of the exam, students took a fairly traditional individual final. For the second half, they worked on one of three lab practicals; every station asked students to find the mass of an unknown object, but we came up with stations using three different models. While all of the lab practical stations were related to labs we did in class this trimester, I got a lot of questions about how to use the LabQuests. The other physics teacher and I are thinking about what it might look like to have students build themselves a reference for key probeware skills. I also think this would have been a fun one to whiteboard and share results since groups were figuring out the same thing three different ways.

Unbalanced Force on a Particle Model
Momentum Transfer Model
Energy Transfer Model

Chemistry Essentials: Lab Practical

Similar to the physics class, the chemistry students took a pretty traditional individual final, then completed a lab practical. This tri, I had students identify a liquid based on the density. I was really pleased by how many students naturally used other observations to decide whether their result made sense.

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Day 109: Free Response & Mistakes Whiteboarding

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Today was our last day of regular classes before final exams.

AP Physics 1: Free Response

For my tri 2 final, I like to give most of a practice AP exam. Since our final periods are 90 minutes long, I had my students do the free response portion today. I took out the problems on circuits and rotation since my students haven’t seen those topics yet. Students seemed to feel pretty good afterward; I think they are internalizing that its okay not to nail the problems.

Physics: Mistakes Whiteboarding

We used some problems from the final review for mistakes whiteboarding. Students in this course have really bought in to the value of mistakes whiteboarding and I end up saying very little during these discussions. Its a lot of fun to listen to students during these discussions.

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Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Whiteboarding

We used some problems from the final review for mistakes whiteboarding. A lot of students were having some trouble focusing, which is not unusual for this course at the end of a tri; I think a lot of them are anticipating spring break and the start of the next trimester. My co-teacher and I made some changes to how we talked about particle diagrams this tri to emphasize them as a thinking tool, and it was a lot of fun to see some of that work pay off during the discussion today.

Day 108: Final Review

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AP Physics 1: Free Response Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded some released free response problems. We also spent some time talking about the scoring guides to drive home that you can do well on the AP exam while missing some, or even a lot, of points. A lot of my students are feeling very good going into the final, which is exactly what I want. There’s also a sense of camaraderie, where the classes seem to see themselves as going into something difficult together, which is also great to see.

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded selected problems from the review for a gallery walk. We didn’t do a great job of spiraling content this trimester, so a lot of the review has been about revisiting old topics so that students are feeling confident and comfortable in their skills again.

Chemistry Essentials: Practice Problems

After doing some problems emphasizing particle diagrams, we worked on a separate review today that gives more standard problems. Breaking the review into parts seemed to help students feel less overwhelmed by the task and starting with the particle diagrams set them up nicely to think conceptually about the problems on today’s section.

Day 107: Final Review

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Today was originally scheduled for professional development. Last week, it got switched to a regular school day to make up for some of our snow days.  In spite of the short notice and another round of snow, the majority of students were in school today. All three of my classes

AP Physics 1

Students got a mix of goal-less problems and released free-response problems. The goal-less problems got a mixed response, partly because we haven’t done a lot this year, but the people who liked them really liked them.

Physics

Students worked on a packet of problems from throughout the trimester.

Chemistry Essentials

Students did mistakes whiteboarding with particle diagrams connecting to each of the topics from this tri.

Day 106: Assessment Bonanza

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Tomorrow was originally scheduled to be a staff development day, so all three of my classes took assessments wrapping up their last topic.

AP Physics 1: Waves Assessment

This quiz included an experimental design problem off a past AP exam. My students still find those kinds of problems really intimidating, but I’m really pleased with the work on the quizzes I’ve looked at so far. In general, both this year and in the past, I’ve had a lot of trouble helping my students feel as confident as I think they should when it comes to the AP Physics 1 exam, and I think their reaction to experimental design problems is one symptom. I have noticed that one of my sections is much more confident, and I don’t think its coincidence that they are also a MUCH smaller section. As we get into the home stretch to May 7, I need to give some thought to how I can help all of my students recognize the progress I’ve seen in them.

Physics: Pendulum Assessment

Students took their quiz on pendulums, then started working on a final review.

Chemistry Essentials: Formula Writing Assessment

Students quizzed over formula writing. Most were feeling very good about their work at the end of the quiz, which is a great place to be at the end of the term.

Day 105: Standing Waves, Whiteboarding, & Covalent Bonding

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AP Physics 1: Standing Waves

Students worked on some problems for standing waves in pipes. Students seemed to be getting the hang of waves, which is good since we need to wrap up this topic tomorrow!

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s pendulum problems. One problem describes g on the ISS as “close to zero”, with the intention that students treat it as if g were zero, but the wording was enough to trip up a lot of students. I’ve been pushing them to read carefully and pay attention to details in the problem, so this was a good problem to have.

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Chemistry Essentials: Covalent Bonding

Students worked on translating between names, formulas, and particle diagrams for compounds with covalent bonds. We didn’t get into how to figure out the formulas from the number of valence electrons, so this ended up being pretty easy compared to the ionic bonding we’ve been working on.

Day 104: Standing Waves, Pendulum Problems, & Polyatomic Ions

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I dropped the ball on taking photos today.

AP Physics 1: Standing Waves

We discussed the pattern in the number of wavelengths that appeared on a rope fixed at both ends, then I tasked students with determining whether the same pattern applies in other situations. Students were able to recognize the 1/2 wavelength pattern falls apart in some situations. Tomorrow, we’ll firm up the 1/4 wavelength pattern that fits these situations.

Physics: Pendulum Problems

Students worked on calculations and conceptual problems for pendulums. A lot of students were making good use of units to verify their work.

Chemistry Essentials: Polyatomic Ions

Students worked on writing formulas and sketching particle diagrams for compounds that include polyatomic ions. Students made good use of the simplified Lewis dot structures we’ve been using to work out the correct formulas and were able to make the leap to distributing subscripts for the polyatomic ions.