AP Physics 1

Day 63: Projectile Problems & Energy Conservation

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AP Physics: Projectile Problems

For most of the hour, students worked on some problems for projectiles launched horizontally. A few students needed reminders to start by sketching and annotating their velocity-time graphs, but students were pretty successful once they remembered to use the graphs. Students also checked to make sure I’m not going to do anything crazy tomorrow, like go over the problems, when they’ve much rather do the Mistake Game.

On Friday, students requested slow-motion video of the race between a horizontally launched marble and a marble in free-fall, so I recorded some video before school.

 

Earth Science: Energy Conservation

Students whiteboarded their predictions for the scenarios in PhET’s Energy Skate Park I’d given them Friday, then we tested predictions and discussed the results. We especially focused on the total energy bar to get the idea of conservation of energy.

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Day 62: Board Meeting & Energy Types

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AP Physics: Board Meeting

Today, students whiteboarded the results of yesterday’s video analysis. Since my 2nd hour had quite a bit of discussion and worked through much of the sense-making while they were in the computer lab yesterday, I skipped some of the structure I’ve been using in board meetings and we got to the big ideas pretty quickly, which left time to whiteboard CERs of predictions for a demo that drops one marble straight down while launching a second horizontally. In my 2nd hour, I barely had to speak as the students spoke to each other and had some fantastic discussion that accomplished exactly what I hoped it would. In my 4th hour, my students were much more hesitant to speak up. They are a naturally quieter group and had a lot less dialogue in the computer lab, so I think they would have benefitted from some pre-discussion in their lab groups and a little more structure, like Casey Rutherford’s Observations, Claims, & Evidence which I’ve used to frame most of the board meetings this year.

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Physical Science: Energy Types

We had some discussion about what seemed to be key characteristics of the energy types in yesterday’s simulation to form a basis for some definitions. I took a page from Modeling Instruction and defined potential energy as coming from interactions, then had some discussion about what constitutes an interaction. In the past, I’ve used stored energy as the definition for potential in 9th grade, but I like that interaction energy solidifies the connection between potential energy and forces.

energy-defs

Day 61: Projectile Video Analysis & Energy Skate Park

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AP Physics: Projectile Video Analysis

I gave students two videos of some students tossing a basketball and a video analysis guide I put together, then tasked them with getting the position vs. time and velocity vs. time graphs for each video of the basketball. I had a bunch of students who got genuinely excited when they looked at the velocity vs. time graphs and started putting together what they know so far to begin a model of projectile motion. One group even cheered when the slope of their y-velocity vs. time graph matched what their model so far!

vid-analysis

Physical Science: Energy Skate Park

Students played with PhET’s Energy Skate Park simulation to look for how they could change the size of the various bars in the bar chart. Students pretty enthusiastically played with as many options as they could find, and made some nice observations, like how the motion of the skater changes when they switch to the moon or Jupiter.

skate-park

Day 60: v-t Graphs & Marshmallow Debrief

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AP Physics: v-t Graphs

We are starting projectile motion, so today I did a refresher on velocity vs. time graphs. I gave students a few graphs and asked them to annotate the graphs and translate to some other representations. A few of my students got to talking about how their written descriptions of the motion today compare to what they did when we first started constant acceleration, even pointing to particular words and phrases they’ve changed, and the specific change in understanding driving that.

At the end of the hour, I’d planned to go over a few problems on the board to limit how much time this took. When I asked for requests, my students asked if they could whiteboard their solutions instead, so I happily had them do a gallery walk. Have I mentioned lately that my students are awesome?

Physical Science: Marshmallow Debrief

We discussed yesterday’s Marshmallow Challenge. Students recognized many of the growth mindset themes, like the value in learning from failed attempts or the fact that multiple approaches are valuable. We also discussed some things that effective groups do. I want to revisit this discussion later in the tri for students to reflect on how well their group is working.

Day 59: Reviewing Final & Marshmallow Challenge

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Today was the start of a new trimester and, in the excitement, I forgot to take pictures today.

AP Physics: Reviewing Final

I wanted students to go over some problems from last week’s final exam. For one of the problems, I picked a really strong solution, as well as a few that were representative of the most common mistakes, and gave them a scoring guide to assign points. Students said this really helped them get a clear understanding of what exactly is expected, as well as to think about why the wrong answers were wrong. A lot of students realized they’d made mistakes because they did not read carefully, so I need to work on integrating some reading strategies for complex problems.

Physical Science: Marshmallow Challenge

Our 9th grade science sequence is two trimesters of earth science and one trimester of physics. This year, physics is in the middle, so today started our physical science trimester. In spite of this being a full-year course, only 3 of my 35 students had earth science with me last trimester.

Today, we did Tom Wujec’s Marshmallow Challenge, where teams build a tower out of spaghetti, string, and tape with a marshmallow on top. I really like that the TED talk and other resources make it easy to use this to talk about growth mindset, effective collaboration, and other ideas that I want to place as important right away. I also really like having students do something the very first day of class, since it drives home the message that they will need to be active in this class.

Day 58: Tri 1 Reflection

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Its day 2 of final exams, so I took a few minutes to look back on the year so far.

AP Physics

One of my goals this year has been to continue improving the quality of student discussions and I feel like I’m getting some really good discussions this year, though I find myself talking a lot less in 2nd hour. I think part of it is I’ve got some more vocal personalities in my 2nd hour, so I need to work on helping students in my 4th hour who have great things to say speak up more. Next tri, I’m going to try talking to each group about their results as they prep their whiteboards and point out questions or observations they should bring up or try to build on during the whole-class discussion.

At the start of the year, I thought a lot about group dynamics and wanted to work really teaching students how to collaborate effectively. I did some good things in that area at the start of the year, but let a lot of that fall by the wayside as the year progressed. A new trimester is a good time to bring back some of that explicit focus on group skills.

Earth Science

This was my first time teaching earth science since 2008, so I mostly followed the curriculum of a very experienced earth science teacher. If I teach this course again, I need to plan on changing the sequence quite a bit. The teacher I followed is very good about getting the right kind of activity at the right time (for example, something easy at the start of a term or something active on a Friday), but the conceptual development often felt very disjointed to me. I need to spend some time this summer working on the storylines that I want to use in earth science, then rebuilding the curriculum to fit that.

Day 57: Final Exams

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Final exams are today and tomorrow!

AP Physics

I modified one of the College Board’s practice exams to cut out the material we haven’t addressed yet and fit into a 90 min period. I also added a released free-response question from an actual test. My students have been struggling with what a good “explain your reasoning” response looks like, so I think I’ll put together some anonymous responses to those questions, and ask students to score them using the official scoring guide next week.

After school yesterday, it was fun to talk to some students who came in for help. The students who came in were generally eager to share the ways they think about concepts and the connections they are making. One student in particular started out feeling overwhelmed by the course, but is feeling extremely confident going into the final.

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Earth Science

I’m not particularly excited about my 9th grade final; its a pretty standard written, comprehensive final. In the future, I’d like to move to a 9th grade final that emphasizes the practices of science and engineering, maybe borrowing some ideas from Kelly O’Shea. I might start working on that for my 9th grade finals later this year. If I can get to something that embeds the science content meaningfully and is easy to grade quickly, I might even be able to get some of the other 9th grade teachers on board. In 10th grade, our students take a state science test where the only 9th grade material that appears is the science and engineering practices, which suggests that’s what we need to be most certain students are getting from our 9th grade sequence.

Day 56: Toilet Paper Drops & Review

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AP Physics: Toilet Paper Drops

Students wrapped up yesterday’s lab practical and got  chance to try dropping their toilet paper rolls. Groups were very successful. Especially in my second hour, I was really pleased that, without any prompting, the students in groups that finished early split up to look for other groups that could use some help.

 

Earth Science: Review

I had students review for Friday’s final by generating some possible test questions for each unit on a whiteboard, then trading boards with another group. When I put up the title of the first unit, there was a moment of panic as students tried to remember what it was even about, but they pretty quickly turned to their notebooks to remind themselves of the major concepts and look for ideas of questions to ask, which is exactly was I was hoping for.

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Day 55: Toilet Paper Drop & Galaxy Sorting

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AP Physics: Toilet Paper

Students started a lab practical I got from Frank Noschese’s blog. Students were given a height they will drop one toilet paper roll from and are tasked with figuring out where to drop an unrolling toilet paper roll so it hits the ground at the same time. I’m trying to emphasize the ways that students are using forces and constant acceleration in the practical to make sure this is doubling as a review for the final exam.

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Earth Science: Galaxy Sorting

Students were given pictures of a dozen galaxies and tasked with putting them into categories and naming each category. Most groups came up with something pretty close to the three official categories. I can’t decide if I’m happy about that. On the upside, my students are very comfortable with the vocabulary. On the downside, the fact that so many groups got similar results tells me there was limited thinking required.

galaxy-sort

Day 54: Rotational Inertia & Big Bang

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AP Physics: Rotational Inertia

We finally collected data and prepped whiteboards for the rotational inertia lab we’ve been working on. Tomorrow, we’ll spend part of the hour on a short whiteboard meeting to figure out what rotational inertia is proportional to. Students did a nice job of working through all the calculations they had to do to get from something they could measure to the rotational inertia, and it was a good review for the final exam later this week.

 

Earth Science: Big Bang

We discussed the lab from last Wednesday, where students made a graph to find Hubble’s Law. In the discussion, we focused on this result as evidence for the expansion of the universe. Afterwards, I ended up lecturing on the Big Bang Theory and some of the other evidence supporting it. I’m rushing a little bit as I try to cram material in at the end of the tri. Today was a reminder that over the summer, I want to spend some time with the curriculum, comparing it to the required state standards and the district-approved learning targets to get a better idea of what I can cut and where I can add build in more time for scientific practices.