Instructional Strategies

Day 132: Angular Momentum, Lab Practical, & Popcorn

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

We had a snow day yesterday. Students (and teachers!) are getting restless for spring; after seeing the grass and even a few dandelions sprout last week, it was tough to get another 18 inches of snow.

AP Physics: Angular Momentum

Students used Pivot Interactives to explore angular momentum using a collision between a marble and a block. I started by having students determine whether the location of the impact changed whether linear momentum was conserved, which lead to some great conversations. A few students needed some reminders about linear momentum, but that wasn’t surprising given I haven’t done a great job of spiraling back to earlier topics this term.

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Physics: Lab Practical

I gave students some springs we haven’t worked with yet and asked them to make a graph with period on one axis where the slope could be used to find the spring constant. This was the first time I’ve had students go backwards from an equation to picking a graph to make, so it was a little tricky, but students had some great conversations about the relationships they were working with. Next year, I’d like to try to get more lab practicals that focus on graphs rather than just calculations.

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Chemistry Essentials: Popcorn

Students determined the percent yield for a bag of popcorn by finding how many kernels remained unpopped. It was messy, but it gave students a nice, concrete foundation for what percent yield means. It also came up in the discussion why some of the popcorn kernels didn’t pop, which could make this lab something to come back to when students want to blame less than 100% yield on doing the lab wrong or (shudder) human error.

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Day 131: Test, Whiteboarding, & Quiz

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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.

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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 130: Rotational Inertia, Springs, & Whiteboarding

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AP Physics: Rotational Inertia

Students worked on data collection for the rotational inertia lab we started yesterday. A lot of groups are setting up spreadsheets to streamline the calculations, which is great. However, this lab is time-consuming enough that I want to spend some time this summer looking at alternatives or trying to simplify it.

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Physics: Springs

Students worked on connecting models from earlier in the year to the motion of springs. A few students struggled to get started with the free-body diagrams, but most were able to work through and make the connections I was after.

On a side note, I talked to one lab group about their pre-calc homework. They had some problems involving free-body diagrams for blocks on a ramp, but were thrown off by some differences in language and notation. I should find a time to connect with the pre-calc teachers to see if there are ways we could do a better job of building on each others’ classes.

Chemistry Essentials: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems. Since the problems are on the long side, I decided to do a gallery walk today. Stoichiometry seems to be clicking for a lot of students.

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Day 128: Whiteboarding, Springs, & Stoich

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded some torque problems. I can tell the last week or so has been a little disjointed; I had a lot of students trying to use Universal Gravitation to find the force of gravity in the torque problems and some were having trouble with what we meant by the radius. I spent some time talking with those groups how to decide when to use each version of the force of gravity equation, and that helped resolve things.

Physics: Springs

Students wrapped up collecting data for the period of a spring. I overheard a great conversation in a lab group; one student was griping a little about collecting data for the mass since he was convinced it shouldn’t matter based on the pendulum lab. Once they had a few data points, though, there was a moment when he lit up and made a beautiful connection to energy transformations to explain why mass mattered.

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Chemistry Essentials: Stoich

We got the hardware out again to start stoichiometry. Students assembled nuts, bolts, and washers into “molecules” and predicted how many grams of each molecule they should have after a chemical reaction. The manipulatives seemed to help a lot of students wrap their heads around what is going on in a stoichiometry problem, which I’m hoping will translate into success with the paper and pencil problems tomorrow.

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Day 127: Levers, Springs, & Balancing

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AP Physics: Levers

I showed students 2nd and 3rd class levers, then asked them to determine whether the rules for a balanced lever we found last week still work. There was a lot of variety in the type of graphs students opted to make to answer this question, but by the end there was a good consensus that these other types of levers still had balanced torques.lever

Physics: Springs

Students started collecting data to find what affects the period of a spring. I made sure to emphasize the parallels to last week’s pendulum lab, which seemed to help a lot of groups with the experimental design. There were also some great conversations as students tried to predict how certain variables would affect the period.

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Chemistry Essentials: Balancing

Friday’s quiz on balancing and molar mass was one that students either nailed or tanked, with very few in between, so today students got some more practice. A lot of students seem to be approaching groupwork with the idea that if someone at the table has the right answer, they are covered. I pushed back against that today by giving each table a stamp sheet they had to fill by having different members of the group explain to me how they got their answer. Students talked a lot more within their groups than usual, which is exactly what I was going for.

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Day 126: Universal Gravitation, Pendulums, & Quiz

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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.

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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.

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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.

Day 125: Board Meetings & Molar Mass

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Lever Board Meeting

We had the board meeting to discuss the results of the lever lab. A few groups were quick to notice the slope slope on the force graph was the ratio of the distances to the pivot, while the slope on the distance graph was the ratio of the masses they used, which lead nicely into a definition of torque.

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Physics: Pendulum Board Meeting

In my first hour, the board meeting was pretty rough with a lot of very long silences. I forgot this was the first board meeting of the trimester and about half of my students had the other physics teacher last tri, so I should have taken more time to set up the board meeting. My other hour is a little more talkative to begin with, but I also spent more time prepping for them discussion and things went much better.

Chemistry Essentials: Molar Mass

Students applied molar mass to some real-world problems, such as finding how many moles of chalk it took to write their name. Students are approaching the calculations for number of moles very algorithmically without much sense of why they divide the numbers they do. I need to think about how to make the why more apparent; I’ve discussed some analogies, such as bank tellers counting pennies by weight, but I wonder if it would be helpful to actually carry an analogy out in the lab.

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Day 121: Free Response, Practical, & Quiz

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Today is the last day before spring break.

AP Physics: Free Response

We took some time to look at the free response problems from the tri 2 final exam. A lot of students ran out of time on the final, so we spent some time discussing strategies for time management and steps they can take even when they think they are lost on a problem. We didn’t talk about anything ground-breaking and even the physics seemed pretty clear once we got into it; I think the stress of finals got to students and made it tough to use skills they know.

Physics: Projectile Practical

Students wrapped up the horizontal projectile practical from yesterday. One of the advantages of doing projectiles after energy is I didn’t trip up any groups by switching out the marble for a lighter one. Usually, I get at least some groups that do some wild math to try and figure out what the mass changes, but this year’s students either pointed out the mass never showed up in their calculations or used conservation of energy to show it doesn’t matter.

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Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on balancing and representing chemical reactions. I always have a few students in this course who have trouble staying quiet once they are finished; today, all of the conversations I shut down while students were testing were about problems on the quiz, which was pretty awesome. I felt a little bad telling them it wasn’t the right time for those conversations, especially with how passionate the conversations were.

Day 120: Practicals & Demos

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AP Physics: Central Force Practical

I got out the record player and, as a class, we found where a mass starts to slip when the player is at 33 1/3 rpm. Students then calculated what radius they should place the same mass at when the record player is at 45 rpm. Since the velocity depends on the radius, the math got a little hairy, but students were pretty successful working through it and making sense of how all the variables were connected.

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Physics: Projectile Practical

Students rolled a marble down a short ramp to turn it into a horizontal and predicted where it should hit the floor. Both my classes were able to complete it with less support than I expected. After each group managed to hit the target (an old carbon-copy referral form), I asked them to predict where, relative to their first marble, a lighter one should land.

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Chemistry Essentials: Demos

Students balanced a few different chemical reactions, then I demonstrated those reactions. Most of the students seem to be getting pretty confident with both skills and enjoyed the demonstrations. The thing I struggled with is the demos felt very separate from the balancing since they did confirm or otherwise add to the work students had done. I’m wondering if there is something I could have done differently to connect those two pieces better.

Day 119: Whiteboarding

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: Central Force Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded some problems dealing with a central net force. My students who have taken Astronomy are pretty excited with the connections they are seeing to orbits. I also pulled up a simulation of Newton’s Cannon to talk about a problem that asks why the ISS doesn’t crash into the earth.

Physics: Projectile Motion Mistakes

We did the mistakes game, focusing on the diagrams and initial set-up for problems rather than all of the math. There are a lot of long silences, so I might try giving students some structure for additional pre-discussion with their lab groups next time. Maybe students could do a gallery walk and jot down some potential questions for each whiteboard. There are a lot of groups opting to use “vertical” energy to solve for key values, which is pretty cool.

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Mistakes Game

We did the mistakes game with yesterday’s problems on balancing chemical equations. I’ve got the opposite problem of my physics class, where lots of students have things to say, which leads to too many people talking at once. Most of my contributions end up being to re-focus the discussion or redirect students, rather content-related questions to move things along. I’m okay with this problem, even if I’m not sure how to solve it yet.

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