Day 100: KVL Diagrams, TIPERs, & Formula Writing

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

Today classes were shortened due to a pep fest.

AP Physics: KVL Diagrams

We had a very brief discussion about the results of the labs from Wednesday and Thursday; students were consistently very successful at picking up on they key patterns I wanted them to see. I also introduced them to Trevor Register’s KVL diagrams. I like to pair that with color-coded current paths on the circuit diagram.

Physics: TIPERs

Students worked through some conceptual problems on impulse and momentum, mostly taken from TIPERs to get them thinking about what the equations we have so far really mean. A lot of groups really wanted to start by guessing an answer, then come up with some physics to justify it, rather than the other way around. I’ve been encouraging students to use CER with these types of problem, starting with the evidence and working towards the claim, but I’m tempted to try and talk my department into switching to ERC to make the evidence first more explicit.

Chemistry Essentials: Formula Writing

Playing the mistakes game yesterday seemed to help some students start to make sense of writing chemical formulas, though a lot of students still need more practice. Today, I gave students some formulas and asked them to determine whether they are possible based on what we know about bonding. This seemed to help the concepts click for a few more students.

Day 99: Kirchoff’s Laws, Impulse, & Mistakes Game

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

AP Physics: Kirchoff’s Laws

Students used PhET’s circuit construction kit to look for patterns in the current and potential difference in both series and parallel circuits. I usually do the PhET version before the real-world version we started yesterday, but testing season makes it tricky to reserve a computer lab right now. I overheard some students making good connections to their work yesterday and noticing the key things I wanted them to notice.

Physics: Impulse

Students re-did the impulse lab from earlier this week. This time, I spent more time discussing with them why we care about the change in velocity, rather than the velocity at a specific moment. Students were more visibly attentive when I walked through how to get the change in velocity on a LabQuest than they were earlier in the week; I think it helped that they knew we were re-doing the lab because their earlier results came out poorly. I also had groups assign someone to plot their data as it was collected, which had them thinking about whether their results make sense throughout the lab. One section got beautiful results, while the other still had slopes all over the place; I’m not quite sure what happened in the second section.

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Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Game

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems using the Mistakes Game. The students who are using the electron diagrams as a thinking tool are pretty quickly getting the hang of things.

Day 98: Kirchoff’s Laws, Board Meeting, & Chemical Formulas

February 14, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: Kirchoff’s Laws

Students started working on a lab for Kirchoff’s Laws. They measured the current and voltage at different points in the circuit to start looking for patterns. I overheard some good discussion about how the results connect to the Ohm’s Law equation we got earlier this week.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results for the impulse lab, but the slopes of their graphs were way off from what I expected. A lot of groups admitted that once they got their hands on the equipment, they ignored that we were interested in the change in velocity, rather than just the maximum or the minimum. I need to think about how to adjust pre-lab discussions in this course to keep students focused on the key ideas. We were able to get some qualitative ideas about impulse in place from the results, but I decided to have students collect data again tomorrow to get a quantitative understanding.

Chemistry Essentials: Chemical Formulas

Students started writing chemical formulas given the name of the compound and the charges. I got out some beans for students to use as manipulative versions of Lewis dot structures, which helped a lot of students get beyond “flop and drop” when figuring out subscripts. Some students did get thrown by switching between electron diagrams and particle diagrams, so I need to work on keeping the types and purposes of diagrams distinct.

Day 97: Board Meeting, Impulse, & Valence Electrons

February 13, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: Board Meeting

Today, we had two board meetings. First, we discussed the results of last week’s electric potential difference lab, followed by yesterday’s work on Ohm’s Law. The potential difference discussion went well, but the Ohm’s Law lab was trickier. This is the first lab I did as pretty open inquiry where students were working with three different variables, and a lot of groups struggled to relate all three. Next year, I may go back to having students do two separate experiments. There were also several groups who used the battery’s internal resistance and I think a little more pre-lab discussion could have avoided that.

Physics: Impulse

Students tied a cart to a force sensor with an elastic string and collected data for a relationship between the area of the force vs. time graph and the cart’s change in velocity. A lot of students had some trouble with the idea that they were graphing features of the LabQuest graphs, but were able to make sense of what was going on with some support.

Chemistry Essentials: Valence Electrons

Students sketch Bohr models for selected elements to start identifying patterns in the number of valence electrons. Students seemed pretty successful at making sense of why certain elements have certain charges. I also got out the electrolysis machine to give an example of how we know the ratio of elements in a compound.

Day 95: Electric Potential Difference, Conservation of Energy, & Quiz

February 9, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Electric Potential Difference

Students did a variation on the lab to map an electric field in a tray of water. Since I just wanted to define electric potential difference, they measured the voltage along a line with the multimeter’s ground probe in a few different positions (my article about this lab was in the January issue of The Physics Teacher). There was a lot of good discussion within lab groups about what negative voltages mean.

Physics: Conservation of Energy

Before their quiz, students whiteboarded a couple of conservation of energy problems (which I spaced out on taking a picture of). For a lot of students, this reinforced the importance of the meaning-making steps and gave them a boost of confidence before starting the quiz. The downside is there are students who approach the pre-quiz problems as a chance to cram, rather than a warm-up. I’m trying to decide if I’m okay with that trade-off.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took their quiz on atomic models and classifying matter. I’ve been working a lot on the class culture and finding ways to connect with students I’ve been clashing with, and it paid off today when, for the first time, I didn’t have to police students staying quiet after they finished their quiz.

Day 94: Whiteboarding, Bouncy Ball Energy, & Classifying Matter

February 8, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their answers to yesterday’s problems. There were a couple of meaty ones on the worksheet, so I had all groups whiteboard the same problem and then we had several consensus-building conversations.

A visual for quantization of charge

Physics: Bouncy Ball Energy

We wrapped up figuring out where a bouncy ball dissipates energy. As part of the follow-up, we dropped a kickball under a motion detector (thanks to Brian Frank for the idea!) to produce energy vs. time graphs and confirm the results from students’ video analysis.

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Chemistry Essentials: Classifying Matter

Students worked on a worksheet to connect particle diagrams to the vocabulary for classifying matter that we introduced yesterday. I also was able to have really good individual interactions with a couple of students I’ve been butting heads with a lot, which helped make the whole classroom feel more relaxed and positive. I’ve been getting overwhelmed in chemistry a lot this year and have not done a good job of making time to talk to students about things besides chem, and I can’t underestimate the value of those conversations.

Day 92: Board Meeting, Dissipated Energy, & Mistakes Game

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

AP Physics: Board Meeting
Students whiteboarded their results from a Pivot Interactives activity on Coulomb’s Law. There was some debate over whether inverse or inverse-square was the right linearization; I usually don’t have students sketch their points on their whiteboards, but I think that would have been helpful today. Students did a nice job connecting their results to Newton’s Laws and their knowledge from chemistry.

This group ran out of space for their linearization, but I found their set of graphs very satisfying.

Physics: Dissipated Energy

We continued prep for determining which interaction causes a bouncy ball to dissipate energy (my article about this activity was published in the January issue of The Science Teacher) by whiteboarding key points of yesterday’s work. Today really seemed to help a lot of students see the connections between the energy bar charts, free-body diagrams, and velocity vs. time graphs, which is exactly what I was going for.

Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Game

We used the mistakes game to go over yesterday’s problems. There was some great discussion, but it was very tough to keep students from breaking into side conversations. Next time, I should spend a little more time making sure behavior expectations are explicit as possible and helping students see the value in those expectations. There were also some students who were extremely engaged and clearly developed a lot of confidence in sketching Borh models today, which was awesome.

Day 90: Multiple Choice, Practical, & Bohr Model

February 1, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Multiple Choice

Students took a quiz, then we used Plickers to practice some multiple choice. I intentionally picked some problems that go back to topics from earlier this year. I also spent some time reviewing what it looks like to take full advantage of this activity, and saw students more engaged than last time. I think doing multiple choice less often was a good call.

Physics: Practical

Students wrapped up the energy practical they started yesterday. I added a couple of conceptual questions to the task, and was pleased with the conversations I overheard. I think next time I’ll make explaining your group’s answer to those questions part of testing out the result.

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Chemistry Essentials: Bohr Model

Students used PhET’s Build an Atom simulation to play with the Bohr model and explore how it connects to the periodic table. A few students wanted to know why we are using the Bohr model when the quantum model from yesterday’s reading is more complete, which is a great opener for conversation about what makes a useful scientific model.

build atom.PNG

Day 89: Superposition, Energy Practical, & Atomic Models

January 31, 2018January 31, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Superposition

After a little playing with the snakey springs, students went to Pivot Interactives to explore wave superposition. There was a lot of great discussion about whether the wave pulses passed through each other or bounced off each other with students making some pretty detailed observations of the pulses.

Physics: Energy Practical

Students worked on using conservation of energy to determine where to place a photogate on a ramp to get a cart moving at a certain velocity. A lot of groups had trouble interpreting their height measurements; I think a lot of them were not keeping track of where they placed the reference height. One group recognized this is pretty similar to the kinetic energy lab we did and used their lab results to confirm today’s calculation.

Chemistry Essentials: Atomic Models

I still haven’t found a way I’m really happy with to address the state standard about the evolution of atomic models, but today was the day I tried. I used a POGIL activity where students read some summaries of the major steps in the atomic model and answered some questions. A few students felt overwhelmed by the length of the reading, so we talked about how to use the section headings to make it more manageable. I liked this better than last tri’s jigsaw since doing the full reading seemed to help more of them see the different models as part of the same story.

Day 88: Board Meeting, Energy CERs, & Periodic Trends

January 30, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 3 Comments

AP Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results from the standing waves lab and the wave equation came nicely out of the discussion. I usually give students a minute or two to pre-discuss with their lab group once we circle up with the boards, but I think I can skip that time in my 2nd hour; they dove immediately into asking questions and making comments across groups, which is a great sign of how comfortable with each other and with talking physics.

waves wb.jpg

Physics: Energy CERs

Students wrote CERs with their lab groups to make qualitative predictions about objects like the seismic accelerator and a ballistic pendulum. A lot of groups struggled a lot with what good reasoning looks like, which is not surprising. We’ve backed away from reasoning tasks in Physics this year because many students are struggling on the quantitative problems, but I need to remind myself that students need the reasoning tasks to practice the sensemaking we want them to do on problems.

nrg cer.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Periodic Trends

Students used yesterday’s cards alongside their periodic tables to start looking at the patterns in the periodic table. Students made a lot of good observations and started asking questions about the legs used to represent valence electrons, which should make for a nice lead in to atomic structure.

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