Instructional Strategies

Day 74: Balanced Force Practical & Field Lines

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AP Physics: Balanced Forces Practical

I tasked students with figuring out the unknown masses in a set up with several strings at different angles. Groups found they had to be very clear about what they defined at their system, which as a nice element of the task. Different groups defined their systems differently and took different approaches to solving their vector addition diagrams, which lead to some fantastic conversations when groups who finished early compared results. I got really happy when I overhead a student slowing down his group down by telling them the process is more important than the answer, and even used the fact that I couldn’t remember the masses I used as evidence.

During prep today, I got a kick out of grading quizzes. I’ve been asking students this year to self-assess and do a short reflection on each quiz, and several students took that into specific problems on this quiz. These students wrote down some really interesting, specific metacognition right alongside their solutions without any extra prompting. It was really interesting to read. I might start having students do some journaling later this tri to explicitly encourage that kind of thinking.

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Physical Science: Field Lines

To help make sense of magnetic field lines, I had students connect gravitational energy to a topographic map of a hill, then went back to the magnetic field lines we saw yesterday to talk about magnetic energy. I haven’t done any forces with this class yet, but they are fairly solid on energy, so magnetic energy seemed to help ground the material in a way I don’t think forces would have. I also like that the topographic map helped link back to some of the map interpretation students did first tri in Earth Science.

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Day 71: Quiz & Circuits

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Today was our last day of classes before break!

AP Physics: Quiz

Students took a quiz on projectile motion. My collaborative team’s goal is related to experimental design, to I included a problem to give my students some practice and feedback on designing on an experiment entirely on paper. I planned to have them play with some Mystery Tubes after the quiz, but it went longer than I expected, so I will save those for another day.

Physical Science: Circuits

I got out the light bulbs and batteries for students to build real-life circuits and see if the models they developed with the simulation still work. Not all of our light bulbs are identical, and I didn’t check the kits before class, so some groups had bulbs with different resistances. Next year, it could be interesting to use that as a feature, rather than a bug, and ask students to rank the resistance of their light bulbs based on qualitative observations.

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Day 70: Hoop Practical & Circuits

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AP Physics: Hoop Practical

We finished up a lab practical on angled projectiles. Each group had a different distance from the launcher and figured out how high above the ground to place a hoop. In both classes, some groups had to shift their hoop to one side or the other, but eventually managed to get the projectile though all the hoops. I also had some goal-less problems to try and shift students away from needing to be able to picture the full solution to be able to progress. The problems mostly got ignored, because it was more exciting to watch the parabola of hoops come together and it took most of the hour to get all the hoops in place.practical

Physical Science: Series vs. Parallel Circuits

Students used the PhET circuit construction kit again, this time using a lab on series and parallel I modified from Eugenia Etkina’s PUM curriculum. I think students  were getting the big ideas, but its very tough to circulate with a full class in the computer lab, so I feel a little blind. Last year, I was able to do the PhET sims on netbooks in the classroom, so it was easy for me to listen i on student conversations and pull them together at the end of the hour to discuss some big ideas. Next year, I might re-work my calendar to make time for a day in the classroom so my students and I have a chance to make sure they are on track.

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Day 69: Angled Projectile Practical & Ohm’s Law

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AP Physics: Angled Projectile Practical

We wrapped up yesterday’s mistakes game, then started a lab practical. Each group got a different distance from the launcher, and needs to determine how high off the ground to place a hoop so that the projectile will travel through it. Tomorrow, we’ll setup the hoops so students can see the results. In both this practical and the problems we’ve been doing, I’ve found some of my strongest students get stuck. They usually know what they’re doing, but don’t see their way to the answer yet. I need to keep reminding my students that they can play with the pieces, even if they don’t know what the full picture will look like yet. I might look for a good goal-less problem to combine with the practical tomorrow to help push them towards thinking about what else they can do, rather than what the answer must be.

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Physical Science: Ohm’s Law

I’ve found I really like having students use PhET’s circuit construction kit before we get out the batteries and bulbs, so today we went to the computer lab to find a relationship between current, voltage, and resistance. I left the directions fairly open so that students would be designing their own experiments. Since I don’t talk much about units in this course, the simulations ammeter felt like a black box to a lot of the students. I was really intrigued by one student who measured current by counting how many blue dots passed a selected point in one minute, which connects really nicely to the definition of current as the flow of electric charge.ohms-law

Day 68: Mistakes Game & Light the Bulb

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AP Physics: Mistakes Game

My students LOVE using the mistakes game to go over problems (a few have even decided to sneak in mistakes when they whiteboard problems in calculus), but it doesn’t lend itself nicely to complicated calculations like projectiles. To get around that, I tried having students whiteboard just the set-up to Friday’s problems for the mistakes game. Students embraced it and we had some good discussions about the physics without getting bogged down in the algebra. Since students did not see full solutions to the problems during class, I posted the answers, along with my complete solution to one of the problems, on Google Classroom.

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The artist made sure I saw the person on the bottom floor (where they physics room is) is happy and focused, while the history student on the top floor is angry enough to throw a book

Physical Science: Light the Bulb

Students were given an assortment of materials and tasked with lighting a light bulb. Afterward, we watched a clip from Minds of Our Own of MIT graduates attempting the same task. Students were pretty successful at picking out some of the key ideas about what a circuit is. Tomorrow, we’re using the PhET circuit construction kit, and I’ll probably have them start with the same task in the sim to reinforce that a circuit is a closed path since its not obvious with the light bulb.

bulb-lab

Day 66: Projectile Practical & Seismic Accelerator

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AP Physics: Projectile Practical

Students wrapped up a lab practical today, predicting where a horizontally launched marble will hit the floor. Once they pulled it off, I pulled out a lighter marble and asked them to predict where it would hit without taking any new measurements. Last year, most groups spent a fair bit of time debating what should happen and trying lots of different calculations before they figured it out. This year, as soon as I pulled out the lighter marble, every group confidently stated it should hit the same spot and gave beautiful explanations for why. Its clear I’ve done a better job this year of giving students opportunities to confront that misconception.

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The retired referral forms work well as carbon paper

Physical Science: Seismic Accelerator

I showed students the seismic accelerator and asked them to predict what would happen when I dropped it, presenting their answer as a CER. Groups consistently drew nice bar charts, but, since we haven’t done anything quantitative with energy, it was tough for many students to recognize the tiny bouncy ball should fly above the original height. I like this as a follow-up to the bouncy ball lab, but next year, instead of having them make predictions, it might work better to show them what the seismic accelerator does, then have them draw bar charts and explain why the red ball goes so high.

Day 65: Writing Methods & Bouncy Ball Energy

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AP Physics: Writing Methods

Today, students started working on a lab practical to predict where a marble will hit the floor when it rolls off the edge of a table. Since my PLC is focusing on experimental design this year, I had each group write a method they could use to consistently release the marble and find its horizontal velocity. Then, I collected a method from each group, shuffled them, and gave each group a method they had to try and follow. In my second section, I told students they should actually find the horizontal velocity, then write the method in a way that the next group should get the same result, which really seemed to help students decide how much detail to include. This also very naturally lead to a lot of groups talking about how big their uncertainty is so they could decide if the group using their method was “close enough.”img_20161214_120111

Physical Science: Bouncy Ball Energy

Students measured the rebound heights as various bouncy balls bounced to look at the energy lost. While students really like the lab (bouncy balls are fun!), they don’t have to do much thinking about energy, even though I added some bar charts and energy questions. Tomorrow, I might pull out the seismic accelerator to have them make some predictions about a stack of bouncy balls in order to get them thinking about energy in these systems a little more.

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Day 64: Mistakes Game & Bar Charts

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AP Physics: Mistakes Game

We whiteboarded yesterday’s problems using the Mistakes Game. Most groups came up with their mistake by either talking about what they thought the most common wrong answer would be or by picking a mistake they made on the way to solving the problem. The highest math class had a field trip today, so a fair number of students were missing, but some students who are normally very quiet stepped up and spoke quite a bit, so I didn’t have to say much during either discussion. I was also pretty happy when the group presenting pointed to the “momentum force” on their free-body diagram and another student quoted Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.

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Physical Science: Bar Charts

Students worked on drawing energy bar charts. Some students are struggling with how to tell which types of energy are present, but most got the hang of it once they revisited the definitions of the different types of energy. I do want to keep thinking about how I introduce energy in that class

Day 62: Board Meeting & Energy Types

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AP Physics: Board Meeting

Today, students whiteboarded the results of yesterday’s video analysis. Since my 2nd hour had quite a bit of discussion and worked through much of the sense-making while they were in the computer lab yesterday, I skipped some of the structure I’ve been using in board meetings and we got to the big ideas pretty quickly, which left time to whiteboard CERs of predictions for a demo that drops one marble straight down while launching a second horizontally. In my 2nd hour, I barely had to speak as the students spoke to each other and had some fantastic discussion that accomplished exactly what I hoped it would. In my 4th hour, my students were much more hesitant to speak up. They are a naturally quieter group and had a lot less dialogue in the computer lab, so I think they would have benefitted from some pre-discussion in their lab groups and a little more structure, like Casey Rutherford’s Observations, Claims, & Evidence which I’ve used to frame most of the board meetings this year.

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Physical Science: Energy Types

We had some discussion about what seemed to be key characteristics of the energy types in yesterday’s simulation to form a basis for some definitions. I took a page from Modeling Instruction and defined potential energy as coming from interactions, then had some discussion about what constitutes an interaction. In the past, I’ve used stored energy as the definition for potential in 9th grade, but I like that interaction energy solidifies the connection between potential energy and forces.

energy-defs

Day 60: v-t Graphs & Marshmallow Debrief

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AP Physics: v-t Graphs

We are starting projectile motion, so today I did a refresher on velocity vs. time graphs. I gave students a few graphs and asked them to annotate the graphs and translate to some other representations. A few of my students got to talking about how their written descriptions of the motion today compare to what they did when we first started constant acceleration, even pointing to particular words and phrases they’ve changed, and the specific change in understanding driving that.

At the end of the hour, I’d planned to go over a few problems on the board to limit how much time this took. When I asked for requests, my students asked if they could whiteboard their solutions instead, so I happily had them do a gallery walk. Have I mentioned lately that my students are awesome?

Physical Science: Marshmallow Debrief

We discussed yesterday’s Marshmallow Challenge. Students recognized many of the growth mindset themes, like the value in learning from failed attempts or the fact that multiple approaches are valuable. We also discussed some things that effective groups do. I want to revisit this discussion later in the tri for students to reflect on how well their group is working.