Instructional Strategies

Day 8: Bowling Balls, Motion Maps, & Density

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AP Physics 1: Bowling Balls

Students worked on a bowling ball and mallet lab based on Frank Noschese’s version. There was some good debate about whether a bowling ball needs to be tapped to roll at a constant speed, so we used the Motion Shot app to make a motion map we could use to check.

Motion_Shot_2017_09_05_12_06_19

Physics: Motion Maps

To introduce motion maps, I drove a fridge rover across my whiteboard and marked the position at regular time intervals. Motion maps also linked nicely back to the buggy lab, since I forced students to use time as the independent variable. Students then worked on problems; in my 1st hour, most of my students chose to work at desks mostly independently, which I think made the problems more challenging for both my students and for me. In my 6th hour, I started by letting students know the problems were designed to be done in groups and talked about the advantages of completing the task in a group. I’m also wondering if it would help if I made more use of a strategy I got from Designing Groupwork: Strategies for Heterogeneous Classrooms where we take time for some explicit class discussions about what skills are needed for a task to emphasize the value of multiple abilities.

motion map.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Density of Water

Students did a lab to find the density of water, then we had a short board meeting with the results. We kept the board meeting pretty simple and I was very pleased with how it went; my favorite observation is a student who noticed that different groups had data points at different masses, but every group still got the same slope.

Day 7: Dueling Buggies, Board Meeting, & Volume

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AP Physics 1: Dueling Buggies

Students predicted where two buggies would collide based on their starting points and speeds. It was interesting to see how different sections approached this problem; most of the groups in my 2nd hour used motion maps while almost all of my 4th hour used position vs. time graphs. When my 4th hour discussed the buggy paradigm lab, students brought up the fact that some of the graphs intersected, with one even bringing up that position vs. time graphs can be used to elegantly solve the classic two trains problem.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students wrapped up the buggy lab and we had our board meeting. Before the board meeting, I once again had students do a gallery walk and jot some notes down on their lab sheet, which lead to some really good conversation during the board meeting. The downside is students are using the gallery walk to ask questions I’d normally hope to hear during the whole-class board meeting, like asking about what a group was doing when they collected data that gave a negative slope, but students bringing up those points during the whole-class phase, so it doesn’t feel like a big downside.

buggy lab

Chemistry Essentials: Volume

Today, students found a relationship between the amount of water displaced and a solid’s volume in cubic centimeters to get at the equivalence of milliLiters and cubic centimeters. I haven’t had great results with the Modeling Instruction volume lab, so this year I cut some rods from the metals teacher into short sections so that students only needed to find the volume of cylinders. I like that the lab I did today uses the same version of water displacement they’ll use later on, but the math was a struggle for a lot of students. About half of my groups finished data collection and the other half only got one data point because they were caught up calculating the volume. I need to keep working on how to make this lab accessible to all of my students.

volume lab

 

Day 6: Mistakes, Buggies, & Mass of Gas

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AP Physics 1: Mistakes Whiteboarding

Students did mistakes whiteboarding, where groups include intentional mistakes in their solution, then the rest of the class asks questions to try to understand the mistake. I had a lot of groups pick mistakes they’d made working on the problems, which is perfect. In my big class, some students started turning to talk to their peers, which I let go at first since there were good conversations, but it quickly got hard to follow the main conversation and it was hard to shut the side conversations down once I let them start. Next time, I might try having some designated times for talking to a peer vs. talking as a whole class.

ap mistake

Physics: Buggy Lab

Students collected data for the buggy lab. I’ve found students are often very resistant to adjusting their procedure once they have any data written down, even if its only one point, so on the lab template we’re using, I have a step for students to test their procedure without recording any data. This time did exactly what I wanted today and I saw a lot of groups trying multiple approaches before settling on their steps.

buggy

Chemistry Essentials: Does Gas Have Mass?

Students dropped Alka Seltzer into water, then measured the change in mass with and without a balloon on the test tube. This year, even though I had an approach in mind, we had some pre-lab discussion about possible strategies, and students had some neat ideas. There were a few things students came up with that provided a nice seque into this lab.

alka Seltzer

Day 5: Problems, FCI, & Problems

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AP Physics 1: Problems

Students started working on some problems translating between constant velocity representations. Usually, I see a big difference between those who did and didn’t take calculus last year, but the gap seemed much smaller this year; my students who didn’t take calculus last year seemed very comfortable working with graphs and thinking through problems they aren’t entirely sure how to answer yet, which was great to see. My students are also already very collaborative, with students quick to step in when the realized a peer was stuck.

Physics: FCI

Students took the force concept inventory today. It was interesting that my students in this course seemed much more nervous about the pre-test than my AP students did on Friday. The pre-test is useful for the goal setting my district asks PLCs to do and I find looking at the gains, especially on specific questions, useful, but it does take a toll on students settling in to a challenging course to have a challenging pre-test so early on.

Chemistry Essentials: Particle Diagrams

We started by making and discussing histograms for Friday’s labs. There were some great observations and potential ideas to explain some of the changes we saw. Afterward, students got into groups to work on sketching particle diagrams for the experiments we’d done. I also introduced students to the group roles I’m using this year; I don’t think I did enough training to get the full benefit of the roles, but it did seem to help reinforce the idea that every group member has something to offer.

burning steel wool.jpg

Burning steel wool

Day 4: FCI, Board Meeting, & Mass and Change

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AP Physics: FCI

Students took the FCI pre-test. When I asked what they thought of it, several students said it was fun, which bodes really well for the rest of the year.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded the dowel lab we’ve been working on for a board meeting. Time got tight, especially the last period of the day, partly because I was wiped out and didn’t keep as on top of my students as I needed to at this point in the year. In the lab template I’m using, students have a space to do a gallery walk with their lab group and start jotting down some observations, which seemed to help with the discussion during the actual board meeting.

dowel lab board

Chemistry Essentials: Mass and Change

We continued the mass and change sequence today with water melting into ice and a chemical reaction that forms a precipitate. Students consistently resist setting their ice aside to melt while they work on other parts of the lab, so I need to think about how to make things like that feel comfortable.

mass and change

Day 3: Board Meeting, Lab Template, & Burning Steel Wool

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AP Physics: Board Meeting

We did the first real board meeting using yesterday’s results from the buggy lab. Once again, I borrowed Casey Rutherford’s Observations, Claims, & Evidence structure. Some of the chemistry teachers have been integrating techniques from Modeling Instruction, and I got to reap rewards in a really good first board meeting. There was some discussion about whether some intercepts were small enough to call zero, which, along with a whiteboad where students plotted multiple trials, lead really nicely into an introduction to uncertainty. Next year, I think that would go even smoother if I push all groups to truly make time the independent variable and complete multiple trials.

Physics: Lab Template

For the second round of the dowel lab, I had students follow the lab template we’ll be using this year. I also changed the guiding question to “What is the relationship between the mass and volume of these dowels?” since that more naturally motivates measuring multiple dowels and is closer to the kind of guiding questions we’ll have on future labs.

dowels.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Burning Steel Wool

We wrapped up yesterday’s lab by making a post-it histogram of the results students got yesterday, then had some discussion on the significance of those results. Afterward, we continued the mass and change sequence from Modeling Instruction by measuring changes in mass as steel wool burned.

steel wool.jpg

Day 1: Buggies, Broken Circles, & Mystery Tubes

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AP Physics 1: Buggies

I took a page from Frank Noschese and embraced the idea that “Any lab worth doing is worth doing twice.” I gave groups the very vague directive to collect data on the buggy’s motion, then represent it on a whiteboard and turned them loose. My students seemed very comfortable with the ambiguity and dove right in, which was fantastic. I had a good mix of data tables and graphs on whiteboards, along with a lot of variations on graphs, which led to some good conversation on what would make it easier for us to compare results. Tomorrow, we’ll re-do the lab with a focus on being able to compare results. I talked more than I’d like today, but that’s pretty typical of when I do a new discussion.

buggy

Physics: Broken Circles

To start building class culture and learning how to collaborate, I started today with Frank Noschese’s subversive lab groups. Once they were in groups, students did the broken circles activity from Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. Each student got an envelope with pieces of a circle inside. As a group, they had to assemble four complete circles without talking. Afterward, we had some discussion about what skills groups needed to complete the task.

broken circles

Chemistry Essentials: Mystery Tubes

Today was also about class culture in chemistry. This class also started with subversive lab grouping, but  I stepped in more than I did in physics. There were more students in this class who seemed nervous about approaching their peers and it was tougher for them to identify other possible solutions when a group got too big. Afterward, we got out the mystery tubes. I could tell I didn’t make the goal as clear as I sometimes do; while there were a lot of groups who were very engaged and had great conversations, others had trouble getting started.

mystery tube

Day 165: Final Review

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With the seniors done last Friday, I only saw my Chemistry Essentials class today. Today was also our last day of regular classes. Students worked on their final review, though a lot of students struggled to stay on task today. I also saw a lot of students copying answers from each other in order to get it done, rather than engaging in a conversation about the problems. I think it would have been better to have students do some whiteboarding to force the discourse, rather than allowing them to work with their lab groups today. A lot of students also don’t see the connection between making sure they understand the formative work and their success on the assessments, so that is something I will need to think about how to work on for next year.

Day 164: Final Review

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Friday was the last day of school for seniors, so I will only have Chemistry Essentials this week.

Today they started working on a final review. The curriculum is more disjointed than I’d like, so I took the opportunity to help students draw some connections by writing the entire review to focus on a single reaction. The students who were working on the review made good progress.

The class is also about 1/3 seniors, so the class size is down to 22 this week. It was amazing what a difference the smaller class made in terms of my ability to interact with students and provide meaningful help.

Day 163: Presentations, Lab Practical Exam, & Quiz

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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.

lab prac t3.jpg

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.