Day 21: Board Meeting, Quiz, & Quantitative Gas Laws

October 2, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Board Meeting

Students finished up their whiteboards for yesterday’s lab and we had our board meeting. Both classes got really nice results and had good discussions. I’m thinking about moving balanced forces to right after constant velocity next year since it gives some really good opportunities for students to be successful on experimental design.

Physics: Quiz

Today was our quiz on representations for constant acceleration. The quiz was pretty short, but I’ve been giving a few minutes before each quiz for students to do a reflection on their collaboration over the past few days. I also spent a few minutes talking with my students about today’s Nobel Prize announcement, and my students had a lot of questions about both this year’s prize and the Nobel Prize in general.

Chemistry Essentials: Quantitative Gas Laws

I am being compensated by Pivot Interactives for participating in a pilot of their chemistry materials.

Students used Pivot Interactives to collect data for a relationship between pressure and temperature. There were some minor issues with the computers, but once students got logged in they were pretty successful. We only have one gas pressure sensor in the school, so this particular activity makes it possible to do a quantitative lab we otherwise wouldn’t be able to and is more firmly rooted in reality than a simulation. The activity included some questions I really like the temperature when the pressure is zero; I overestimated how well my students understand the intercept of a graph, so I’ll need to make sure I allow time to discuss those questions tomorrow.

Day 19: Assessment, Card Sort, & Vocab

September 28, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Assessment

Students took a quiz on impulse which took a lot longer than I expected; a lot of students spent a lot of time staring in confusion. I think spending Tuesday and Wednesday on forces lead a lot of students to forget how to do impulse and momentum, which tells me I need to work on helping them firm up that model.

Physics: Cart Sort Part 2

Students continued Kelly O’Shea’s kinematics card sort. Today, I added in the word cards and had them record a few of their sorts in their packet.

Chemistry Essentials: Vocab

Before today’s quiz, I had each group prepare a whiteboard with a particle diagram for a different vocabulary term, then had students do a gallery walk.

Day 163: Presentations, Lab Practical Exam, & Quiz

June 1, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

We let seniors go a week early, so today was the last day for seniors.

AP Physics: Presentations

We finished presentations of the final projects students have been working on. There were a lot of great projects; two students analyzed a launcher for balsa wood planes they built in an industrial tech class.

Physics: Lab Practical Exam

Students took the lab portion of their final exam today. There were three different problems that each connected to one of the problems on the written exam. My 5th hour finished in about half the time I expected, probably because it was the second to last period of their last day, so I broke out the mystery tubes.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on reaction rates and energy in chemical reactions. Things got a little tricky; we dismissed seniors about 20 minutes before the end of the school day today, and about one third of my class is seniors, so I needed to make sure the assessment could be finished by then. I didn’t prepare very well for what the juniors would do with the rest of the time, so things got a little chaotic.

Day 159: AP Test Day, Retakes, & Equilibrium

May 24, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: AP Test Day

About two thirds of my students took the AP Physics 1 exam today, so my classes were smaller than usual. I gave them time on to work on their final projects and I cleaned up some lab equipment. I had a broken tumble buggy in my room that a student asked if he could take apart, and ended up getting it running again.

Physics: Retakes

Today was also the unofficial senior skip day, so my physics classes were pretty small, too. I gave students the opportunity to retake assessments in class today, though no one took me up on it. In one of my classes, I’d tried lighting a fire with a convex lens yesterday, but it was too cloudy, so we took advantage of today’s sunnier weather to get some more success.

Chemistry Essentials: Equilibrium

My chemistry class is only about one third seniors, so I actually got to do some teaching today! We did a lab with a reaction between iron nitrate and potassium thiocyanate to see what happened with various changes to shift the reaction equilibrium.

Day 155: Whiteboarding, Refraction, & Quiz

May 18, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Tonight is our annual Relay for Life, so students were not at their most focused today.

AP Physics: Whiteboarding

The students who will be taking the AP Physics 1 exam next week whiteboarded problems from this year’s free response. Students needed more hints than I hoped to get started, but I think that was more to do with excitement over Relay than physics skills getting overly rusty. I still think it will be worth taking some time next week to revisit strategies for breaking down a problem.

Physics: Refraction

After a quiz on ray diagrams, students did a qualitative lab on refraction, making observations of various objects in a clear cup of water and laser beams in a fish tank. Since the fish tank was out anyway, I also left one of my favorite critical angle demos set up.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took their quiz on using an activity series to predict whether a single replacement reaction is likely. I also gave each student a printed copy of their current grade and we had some discussion about ways they can improve, especially retakes. My hope was students would work on preparing for retakes after they finished the quiz, but it didn’t pan out. I think a lot of it was simply because this was last hour on a beautiful spring Friday, with only a few hours to go until Relay for Life, but a few students expressed a lack of self-efficacy when it comes to their grade in this class; I need to keep working on how I can give students a sense of control over their learning in here.

Day 150: Final Project Work, Whiteboarding, & Quiz

May 11, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Its been a rough week, and I spaced out on taking pictures today.

AP Physics: Final Project Work

Students finalized their proposals for the final projects. A lot of students this year are interested in the idea of digging into a movie scene to see if the physics is realistic. I got out my copy of James Kakalios’ The Physics of Superheroes for interested students to take a look at since Kakalios does something similar with comic books.

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded selected problems from yesterday before taking their quiz on sound. A lot of students had trouble with a problem to determine whether an organ pipe is open or closed given the first three frequencies that produce standing waves; I think they weren’t connecting the sketches of standing waves we’ve been doing to the written problems.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on reaction types, as well as a second attempt at limiting reactant stoichiometry. Glancing over the quizzes, many of my stronger students relied heavily on particle diagrams, which is great to see. I need to keep working on helping all of my students connect those diagrams to the math.

Day 143: Mistakes Game, Wave Whiteboarding, & Assessment

May 2, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Mistakes Game

Students put the finishing touches on their whiteboards from yesterday, then presented to the class for the mistakes game. I gave students copies of the scoring guides to use during the discussion today. They were quieter than usual during board meetings, mostly because the whiteboard for a full free-response problem felt a little overwhelming.

Physics: Wave Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems. A lot of students were having trouble visualizing the standing waves, but sketching multiple wavelengths and marking the notes and anti-nodes seemed to help a lot of students.

stand wave wb.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took their limiting reactants quiz. I picked a problem where the numbers work out pretty nicely, and, glancing over the quizzes, it looks like the students who sketched particle diagrams nailed the problem.

Day 140: Post-Test & Speed Dating

April 27, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics & Physics: Post Test

Both of my physics classes took the FCI post-test. Not surprisingly, the scores in my AP class were much higher, but there was significant growth from the majority of the students in both courses.

Chemistry Essentials: Speed Dating

Students did some whiteboard speed dating on limiting reactant problems. The speed dating had mixed results; there were a lot of mistakes finding the molar mass, and most students weren’t comfortable changing the previous group’s work. This did lead into some good discussion on the value of showing your work and what clear work looks like. I also ended up working an example, which several students had requested at the start of the hour, but after the speed dating, I was able to address specific issues and challenges and students were more engaged than I think they would have been early on.

Day 131: Test, Whiteboarding, & Quiz

April 13, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Test

Students took a quiz covering several learning targets that was really long enough to call a test. I’ve been including a self-assessment on my quizzes all year, and today I tried an idea I’ve been toying with to break each learning target being assessed into sub-skills. It didn’t have much impact on how students responded to the reflection I ask for, but students did say they found the breakdown of each learning target helpful. I need to think about good structures to share that with students prior to the assessments.

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems. I went with a consensus-building approach, where all groups whiteboarded the same thing, then we talked as a whole group to agree on the answer. There were a few things I could tell students were rusty on, but students were able to make the connections I was after.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took their quiz on stoichiometry. Several students, when given the mass of one reactant, asked if they could assume they had enough of the other reactants, which I found really interesting since that question hadn’t come up before. Regardless, that question will be a perfect lead-in to limiting reactants.

Day 126: Universal Gravitation, Pendulums, & Quiz

April 6, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Universal Gravitation

We discussed the results of the universal gravitation lab today. Once we got the inverse-square relationship, students quickly recognized the slope of their graphs seemed to be connected to the stellar mass. Prior to class, students entered their slopes and stellar masses into a spreadsheet, so I projected the data and sorted it to confirm the biggest slopes went with the biggest stellar masses. I also graphed students’ slopes vs. stellar mass to get a pretty good value for G.

chart (1)

Physics: Pendulums

Students whiteboarded some problems from yesterday connecting pendulums to other models we’ve used so far this year, including momentum, forces, and energy. A few students needed some reminders, especially about the direction of tension forces, but were very successful in the end.

pend wb.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on molar mass and balancing equations for chemical reactions. Based on a quick glance at their work and input from the para who worked with special education students on the quiz, I think I’m going to see a bi-modal distribution. I’m planning to start stoichiometry, and need to think about how I’m going to support the students who are still struggling with molar mass and balancing reactions when we are starting to use those skills together.