Day 32: Board Meetings, Gravity, Invented Problems

October 22, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Board Meetings

Students whiteboarded their results for the collisions lab and the center of mass video analysis from last week. Between the two labs, I think students started to see why it might be useful to switch between systems when thinking about momentum.

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Physics: Force of Gravity

Students worked on a lab finding the relationship between mass and the force of gravity. Whiteboards are ready and looking good for a board meeting tomorrow!

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Chemistry Essentials: Invented Problems

To review phase changes, I had students write their own problems and exchange whiteboards with another group. There were a few groups that had some good conversation as they were writing their problems and there was some good cross-group conversation when comparing answers after working another group’s problem.

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Day 31: Collisions & Whiteboarding

October 17, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Collisions

I’m doing things a little out of sequence to work around computer access, so we went back to the collisions lab from Monday. Today the data collection went a lot faster than Monday, which is not surprising since Monday was their first time using photogates.

Physics: Whiteboarding

We wrapped up going over some free-body diagram problems. My 1st hour had enough time to start yesterday, so they did mistakes whiteboarding. My 6th hour was a little more crunched, so I picked some of the trickiest problems and assigned two groups to each one. Then, the pairs of group met up to come to a consensus on the answer before we moved into a gallery walk of all the assigned problems.

Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Whiteboarding

Students did mistakes whiteboarding for yesterday’s phase change bar chart problems. This class is still pretty quiet, but they are gradually getting better at speaking up during this activity.

Day 30: Center of Mass, Whiteboarding, & Energy Bar Charts

October 16, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Center of Mass

Students worked on a video analysis of two air pucks attached by a rod from the article by Taylor Kaar, Linda Pollack, Michael Lerner, and Robert Engles in The Physics Teacher. In the past, I’ve used LoggerPro, but there have been delays on getting it installed on student computers, so I took advantage of the video upload feature in Pivot Interactives. Pivot has a ruler with an adjustable length to get measurements to scale, but it was tricky to find a nice alignment, so students ended up skipping scaling the ruler and coming up with a conversion factor, instead.

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded some problems on drawing free body diagrams. In my 1st hour, we did mistakes whiteboarding; I was a little disappointed that no groups put a forward force on the objects moving forward, but not a lot of students made that mistake while they were working on the problems in the first place. My 6th hour is a little behind, so they mostly worked on the problems today and will do some abbreviated whiteboarding tomorrow.

Chemistry Essentials: Energy Bar Charts

Students worked on some LOL diagrams for energy transformations during phase changes. They had some trouble with the system flow part of the diagram, mostly because they are getting tripped up by the idea that it needs to list specific objects.

Day 29: Collisions, Card Sort Part 2, & Board Meeting

October 15, 2018October 15, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Collisions

Students started working on a lab to compare the momentum before and after a collision between two carts. This was their first time using photogates, so the first data point took some time, but then students were able to get data pretty quickly. One student pointed out I’d posted “spoiler alert” instead of a learning target, so we took a few minutes to talk about why I don’t always want to post a learning target at the beginning of a new lab.

Physics: Cart Sort Part 2

We did some whiteboarding Kelly O’Shea’s balanced forces card sort. Students seem to be doing well with what each representation shows. Students are having some trouble with the direction of the normal force, so I took some inspiration from Joe Cossette and did a quick demo where I put a balance on a board, then slowly lifted one end.

Chemistry Essentials: Board Meeting

We whiteboarded the results of last week’s lauric acid phase change lab. Students pretty readily recognized the flat sections of their graphs that occurred during a phase change. I haven’t spent a lot of time setting up the concept of energy in this class, so I think they had some trouble with the idea that the water baths were still changing the energy of the lauric acid when the temperature wasn’t changing, but I think we’ll get there.

Day 28: Assessment, Card Sort, & Phase Changes

October 12, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 3 Comments

AP Physics 1: Assessment

Students to a quiz on free-body diagrams and momentum, which ended up taking a much bigger chunk of the hour than I’d hoped. In one of my classes, students are starting to ask for reading strategies for deciphering problems, which is great. I tend to get a lot of students who are very strong readers, so I usually wait until there is a problem on an assessment that a lot of students clearly got wrong because of reading to ensure students see a need for reading strategies, but since my students are self-aware enough to realize they could use some new strategies before its an issue, I’m happy to start in on those strategies early.

Physics: Card Sort

Students did a balanced forces card sort from Kelly O’Shea, with a lot of influence from Richard Wright, though I left out the system schema that Michael Lerner added. Before the card sort, I spent some time talking about system schema and free-body diagrams, but left my students to figure out the vector addition diagrams in the card sort. In my 1st hour, this went really well; there were great conversations, and my students seem to really get vector addition diagrams. In my 6th hour, things were much rougher; they tend to be less focused (its like they’ve had five classes before mine or something) and I could tell they hadn’t gotten as much out of yesterday’s interaction stations, which made it very tough to build on today. In general, I think I need to do a better job of adjusting to my 6th hour.

Chemistry Essentials: Phase Changes

Students collected temperature and time data for lauric acid as it went from solid to liquid and back again. The data collection requires constant stirring and recording the temperature every 20 seconds, but the graph comes out really nice.

Day 27: Problems, Interaction Stations, & States of Matter

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

I had a sub today.

AP Physics 1: Problems

It was a little tricky figuring out what I could leave for students to work on. I ended up giving them some additional problems on impulse and quantitative force diagrams. I ended up giving them their first taste of a goal-less problem and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do.

Physics: Interaction Stations

I usually avoid leaving anything equipment intensive when I have a sub, but we had Brian Frank’s interaction stations on deck for today. The other physics teacher and I try to stay within a day or so of each other, so we set the stations up in his room, then his classes and mine will switch places the hours I have physics.

Chemistry Essentials: States of Matter

Plan A was for my co-teacher to introduce phase changes by having students do a lab making a temperature vs. time graph for lauric acid as it melts and re-freezes. Then, on Tuesday, we found out a fire drill was scheduled for the start of this hour. Since a lot of students in the class really struggle with transitions and with changes to the routine, a sub, plus a fire drill, plus a lab just seemed like a disaster. I ended up putting together a reading assignment from the textbook introducing the three states of matter we’ll be working with.

Day 26: Problems, Bowling Balls, & Assessment

October 10, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Problems

Students worked on a mix of problems on impulse and on using formulas for types of forces. During the second part of class, students whiteboarded problems for a gallery walk.

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Physics: Bowling Balls

Today was bowling ball day! Students worked through Frank Noschese’s bowling ball and mallet activity. After getting a class rule so far for taps and bowling ball motion, a few students commented it reminded them a lot of Newton’s 1st Law from 9th grade physical science. Imagine that!

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Chemistry Essentials: Assessment

Students took their gas laws quiz today. Last year, I was pretty good about planning some kind of activity for after the assessment. About half my students take the assessments in a pull-out setting and many of them need more time than the students who stay in the classroom, so I did a lot of nature of science-type activities with students in the classroom while pull out students finished their assessments. I’ve been dropping the ball on that and need to get back into that routine. The students who stayed in the classroom weren’t getting into trouble when they finished, but I’d prefer to have something worthwhile for them to do.

Day 25: Friction, Groupwork Reflection, & Pressure

October 9, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Friction

Students whiteboarded the friction lab from yesterday. There was some good discussion and I can tell students are getting more comfortable talking about graphs. Its been a couple of years since I last did this lab, and the results are as messy as I remember, but students already seem to have a clearer idea of what the coefficient of friction is telling them, so I think it was worth the time.

Physics: Groupwork Reflection

Today was a quiz day and the routine has become to spend the first part of the hour on an assessment doing some groupwork reflection. I spent some time on discussions about what skills students had used working on certain tasks to reinforce the value of multiple abilities. I have one class that seems to be buying in to valuing multiple abilities more than the other, but I think progress is happening on that front.

Chemistry Essentials: Pressure

To wrap up gas laws, I did a few demos. Before each one, I had students whiteboard a CER with their prediction. My favorite is a demo where I put a pipe between a large and a small balloon with each balloon clamped shut. Students have to predict what will happen when I remove the clamps. The version I first saw calls for putting a very small amount of air in the little balloon, so it isn’t stretching much, which forces air into the big balloon when you remove the clamps. I prefer inflating the small one enough that the rubber has stretched and, when the clamps are removed, the air just stays put in both.

Day 24: Friction, Mistakes Whiteboarding, & Gas Law Problems

October 8, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Friction

Students worked on collecting data for variables that affect the force of friction. I have some friction blocks with a fuzzy side and a plain wood side, and asked students to make a graph of friction force vs. mass for each side, then prepare a CER for whether surface area and speed matter. A few groups opted to add a graph of friction force vs. mass for the narrow side of the block to answer whether surface area matters, and got beautiful results where the slope matched for both sides covered in the same material.

Physics: Mistakes Whiteboarding

We did mistakes whiteboarding with Thursday’s problems. I dropped the ball on taking pictures, but there were some fantastic mistakes, especially on problems where neither the final nor the initial velocity is zero. I’m also seeing some great things emerge in the way my students approach discussion; in my 1st hour, there is one student who tends to be one of the most vocal, but both he and the rest of the class were very conscious of finding opportunities for other students to speak up.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Law Problems

Students worked on some problems doing calculations with the gas laws. Since a lot of my students have very weak algebra skills, we are doing these problems proportionally. While my students worked, my co-teacher and I conferenced with each student about their grade and their progress so far.

Day 23: Board Meeting, Annotating Graphs, & Gas Laws

October 4, 2018October 4, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today was students’ last day before a 3-day weekend and our homecoming pepfest, so classes were short and students were more energetic than usual.

AP Physics: Board Meeting

We had a board meeting for the spring force lab. Students initiated some good discussion about the intercepts in both sections, but I had to do a little coaxing to get them thinking about the values of the slopes. One of the challenges was a lot of groups hadn’t distinguished between mass and force of gravity, which tells me I should have done a little more pre-lab discussion, especially since that distinction was just introduced earlier this week.

Physics: Annotating Graphs

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems for a short gallery walk before trying some calculations. I think this is the first year where I didn’t have any students opt to use the formula for the area of a trapezoid on any of their graphs; it just felt more natural to most of my students to split the graph into a triangle and rectangle (which is what I usually do). When students started working with numbers, I had a lot of students independently start talking about specific times and velocities as coordinate pairs, which I haven’t seen students do before and was pretty great.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws

Students sketched their graphs from the past few days for a simplified board meeting. One of the things I really appreciate about this group is I have some students who are really willing to speak up when they are confused about something; one of my students was struggling to see how the graphs fit with the qualitative relationships we found earlier this week and didn’t hesitate to say so, which lead to some valuable discussion about how to read a graph.

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Instructional Strategies