AP Review

Day 145: AP Test Day & Pangea

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AP Physics: AP Test Day!

As I write this, my students are sitting in the AP Physics 1 exam! I only saw one of my classes before the test, and I told them they could do whatever will help them feel good going into this afternoon’s test, with one of the options being to simply relax for a period. The class asked me to go over one of their last quizzes and to review a few concepts. After that, a few students worked independently to go over a practice test they took. Meanwhile, I taught a group of students how to play Quiddler and had a blast while getting royally trounced by all of them.

quiddler

Earth Science: Pangea

Students got continents with indicators for what kinds of rocks and fossils are present. They used that information, along with the shapes, to construct Pangea, which should lead nicely to the idea of moving plates. I didn’t get to see yet how it went; the AP Chem teacher offered to trade classes with me since she has a lot of my physics students and they were begging for one more chance to ask me questions.

pangea

Day 144: Review & Seafloor Spreading

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AP Physics: Review

A little over half of my students were at the AP Chemistry test today, so I left it open for students in class to do what they needed to feel ready for tomorrow’s exam. I had one group of students go back over old quizzes to focus on mistakes they’d made, while some other students asked for a free-response question on circuits.

Earth Science: Seafloor Spreading

Students looked at maps of a couple of different data on the mid-Atlantic ridge. Next time, I might try to get them pre-colored maps of the data to allow for more time on the analysis and interpretation. This did combine nicely with Friday’s look at earthquake depth to justify subduction on the coast of South America. I lead students through the connection due to lack of time, but it would be interesting to give students more room to connect this data to Friday’s earthquake data.

spreading.jpg

Day 143: Plickers & Plates

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AP Physics: Plickers

Most of my students will be taking the AP Chemistry exam on Monday, so this was our last day all together before the AP Physics exam. We did one last round of Plickers, using some problems many students got wrong on the practice exam they did outside of class.


Earth Science: Tectonic Plates

My students don’t know it yet, but we started on tectonic plates today. They plotted the location of some earthquakes, color-coding them by depth, then they started looking for patterns. On Monday, we’ll talk about that it’s all means.

Day 142: Models & Earthquake Scales

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AP Physics: What Models Apply?

As we’ve been working free-response problems this week, the toughest part for most students was identifying what tools would be useful (almost like that’s actually a very challenging skill). I picked some free-response problems from practice tests and had students identify some models and representations they thought would be useful. Then, we discussed the justifications for the items students picked. 5 days to go!

models

Earth Science: Earthquake Rating Scales

Students read a bit about the three most common rating scales for earthquakes. Afterward, they used witness descriptions to map the Mercalli scale ratings for an imaginary earthquake. I added a question asking students to write a CER for the location of the epicenter, and was pleased with the discussion it sparked and the ways it helped students take the more abstract rating back to something very concrete.

mercalli

Day 141: Center of Mass & Epicenters

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AP Physics: Center of Mass

I started class a center of mass demo that I think I first saw from Dan Burns. I balanced a dynamics track on a block and placed a couple of carts in the center, then asked students to predict what should happen when the carts launched. Afterward, students prepared whiteboards with their solutions for the free-response problems we’ve been working on this week.

 

Earth Science: Epicenter

Students used some simulated seismographs and a travel time curve to locate the epicenter of an earthquake. A lot of students struggled with reading the travel time curve, so I need to do a better job of scaffolding it next time. The seismographs had time marked with the number of minutes after an arbitrary zero, which made it difficult for students to separate the arrival time of the waves from the actual travel time; next time, it would be better to use seismographs with actual timestamps. I also would like to have students spend some time interpreting the travel time curve before trying to combine it with seismograph data.

epicenter

Day 140: Types of Mass & Seismometers

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AP Physics: Types of Mass
I wanted to revisit gravitational and inertial mass, so I got out the inertial balance and asked which type of mass a spring’s vibration should depend on. Finally, we used the motion detector to find the period with and without a string supporting the added mass and got beautiful results.

Afterward, students worked on some free-response problems in their groups. Tomorrow, they will get limited time with the scoring guides, then present their assigned problem.

Earth Science: Seismometers
Students built a very basic seismometer, then experimented with recording different types of earthquake waves. The results varied a lot, but it did lead to some good discussion on the limitations of the earliest seismometers.


Day 139: Free Response & Earthquakes

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AP Physics: Free Response

Students whiteboarded a couple of free-response problems off the 2015 exam, then used the released scoring guides to see how they did. All of it happened in small groups, so some groups dug more carefully into their errors than others. Tomorrow, I was planning to do some more free response, and I think I will build in some presentations to the whole class to add a layer of accountability.

wb (4)

Earth Science: Earthquakes

We started establishing some ideas about earthquakes. I pulled out the slinky and snakey spring to model the different types of waves. It was all pretty teacher-directed, so I’d love to come up with a way for students to build more of those ideas on their own.

slinky.jpg

Day 138: Free Response & Review

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AP Physics: Free Response

I made today an optional in-class retake day. Since some students wanted the full hour to do multiple learning targets, I decided to skip doing some multiple choice on Plickers and gave students some free response problems from the 2015 AP exam. On Monday, we’ll take a look at the scoring guides.

Earth Science: Review

Students generated some questions for each learning target on whiteboards, then traded with other groups to try and answer the questions they came up with. I’ve been doing this a lot in my Earth Science classes, and its fun to see the improvement this year, even with students I only have for one tri. A lot of teachers in my building are working getting students to ask high-level questions as part of using AVID instructional strategies, and its neat to see that paying off a bit.

IMG_20170421_083753

 

Day 130: Plickers & Dam Removal

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AP Physics: Plickers & Quiz

We continued our routine of Plickers to practice some multiple choice questions, followed by a quiz on this week’s new material. I’m continuing to have students pick an answer individually, then discuss and vote again. There were a couple where students struggled to identify useful representations and, once I gave a nudge, they quickly got to the correct answer. I’m thinking about working in a step where students identify applicable models before they pick an answer to help with that.

plicker

Earth Science: Dam Removal

Students used stream tables and a foam model of part of the Salmon River to get some background knowledge for their engineering project. They conducted some observational experiments on sediment transport and deposition, first in a natural, unblocked river, next in a river with a dam, and finally when the dam is removed with a “blow-and-go” approach, where the entire dam structure is removed at once.

dam.jpg

Day 125: Plickers & Earth Resources

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AP Physics: Plickers & Quiz

Between now and the AP exam, my plan is to spend Fridays on multiple choice practice, followed by a quiz. We used Plickers again, with students first voting on answers individually, then talking to a peer before voting again; its really interesting to see how their answers shift with this process. I picked several problems where thinking in terms of a system’s center of mass is useful, and students seemed to grasp that idea, though we will need to revisit to make sure it is solid. There were a lot of great conversations along the way.

plicker

Earth Science: Earth’s Resources

I ended up doing some pretty traditional notes to address the learning targets on Earth’s resources. I’d love to put together an activity where students have to argue whether a certain mine or pollution source is worth it (come to think of it, the proposed PolyMet mine near the BWCA would have made for a great Socratic seminar or philosophical chairs), but I ran out of time to prepare something for this year. My students didn’t mind the notes; it turns out several of them had a test next hour in AP Human Geography over a lot of the same material.