Instructional Strategies

Day 152: Curved Mirrors & Neutralization 

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Physics: Curved Mirrors

We started by whiteboarding yesterday’s reflection problems. Along the way, I had a student stand in front of a nice, long horizontal mirror while someone else held a whiteboard between the student and the mirror to show a blocked object can still form an image. Afterward, students started making some qualitative observations about curved mirrors. My favorite part was when students noticed the hologram mirror I had out and start puzzling through what was going on. Even once the opened it up, students were eager to try changing the setup to see what would happen and test their ideas. I think some students were legitimately excited when I told them we’d draw the ray diagram for it later this week.


Chemistry: Neutralization Reactions

Students practiced determining the products in neutralization reaction. I was pretty pleased when a student asked “Aren’t these just double replacement reactions?” Last tri, a lot of students struggled to connect one day in class to the next, so this tri I’ve been much more intentional about trying to help students make those connections, so it’s gratifying to see students looking for links between new and old topics unprompted.

Day 149: Whiteboarding & Equilibrium

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Physics: Whiteboarding

I had all of my students for the first time this week! We did some abbreviated whiteboarding of the labs and problems from this week as a way to summarize the big ideas we’ve been working on.

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Chemistry: Equilibrium

Students set up a reversible reaction in several test tubes, then experimented with how to change the equilibrium. Afterward, we spent some time discussing the role energy plays in why some of the methods to disturb equilibrium worked.

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Day 143: Pinhole Cameras & Reaction Types

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Physics: Pinhole Cameras

Students built simple pinhole cameras, then experimented with how to change the image that appeared and drew some ray diagrams to explain their observations. A lot of students were really thinking deeply about what the ray diagrams mean and how to interpret them to understand the image produced, which was great to see.

Chemistry: Reaction Types

Students did a lab where they observed each of the five reaction types in action. Several groups were really thinking through how their observations connected back to the reaction equation, which lead to some great conversations.

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Day 142: Whiteboarding

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Physics: Ray Diagram Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their solutions to the shadow and color worksheets from earlier this week. Students had a good grasp of the ray diagrams and there was some good discussion about the color stuff. We used some overhead projectors with stained glass panes to test a few of the color questions.


Chemistry: Reaction Types Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their solutions to the problems on yesterday’s lab. Compared to last tri, students had a much better grasp of the different types, especially single replacement and double replacement. I think the Legos helped reinforced the physical meaning of the reaction equations.

Day 139: Color & Lab Discussion

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Physics: Color

Students put colored beads under different colored light bulbs and tried to pick out the red, green, and blue beads. In addition to coming up with a measure for how easy it was to sort the beads, they kept track of which beads they tended to mistake for which color.

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Chemistry: Lab Discussion

We spent some time discussing yesterday’s percent yield lab. Previously, we’ve only done problems where the mole ratio is a whole number, so I was a little worried doing a lab with a fractional ratio, but that worry was misplaced. I need to stay out of the trap of underestimating my students. There was also some good discussion about why the percent yield was not 100%.

Day 133: Closed Pipes & Percent Yield

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Physics: Closed Pipes

Students whiteboarded and discussed their results from yesterday’s lab on closed pipe resonators. They pretty easily recognized that, since the graphs of tube length vs. wavelength consistently have a slope near 0.25, 1/4 of the wave must have “fit” into the tube to produce a standing wave. This lab is traditionally used to find the speed of sound, but I always ended up just giving them length = wavelength/4, which bugged me. By having students use the lab to find that relationship, they only needed to use relationship between speed, wavelength, and frequency they found using snakey springs and the speed of sound, which they found using both a Direct Measurement Video and a Vernier microphone.

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Chemistry: Percent Yield

Students continued working on their percent yield problems today. We spent some time discussing the physical meaning of the numbers they were using, especially the numbers in the balanced chemical equation and the molar masses since confusion about what those represent lead to a lot of the struggles students had on yesterday’s quiz.

Day 132: Closed Pipes & Percent Yield

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Physics: Closed Pipes

Students whiteboarded their results from yesterday’s lab and we discussed the results. Afterward, students started working on finding a relationship between wavelength and the length of an air column needed for a standing wave, using the speed of sound from the video to get the wavelength of a tuning fork.

Chemistry: Percent Yield

I introduced the concept of percent yield and students started working through some problems. They also took a quiz on stoichiometry, which didn’t go as well as I hoped. Looking at their work, I think a lot of students lost track of what all the different numbers mean, so I’m tweaking some lessons for later this week to try and get back to the physical meaning of the numbers they are using.

Day 131: Speed of Sound & Speed Dating

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Physics: Speed of Sound

After some time playing with the wave generator to confirm Thursday’s lab results, students used a Direct Measurement Video to produce a position vs. time graph and find the speed of sound. Tomorrow, they’ll put that speed to use in closed pipe resonators.

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Chemistry: Speed Dating

Students needed just a little more practice to firm up their stoichiometry skills, so we did some whiteboard speed dating with problems similar to what will be on tomorrow’s quiz. I was really pleased at the number of groups who were really talking through problems , taking turns with the marker, and taking other steps to ensure that both students really understood what was going on.

Day 129: Wave Superposition & Stoich

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Physics: Wave Superposition

We spent some time discussing the observations students had made about wave superposition yesterday. There was some good debate about whether pulses were reflecting off each other or passing through each other. Students then practiced sketching superpositions based on the original waves.

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Chemistry: Stoich

We spent some time discussing the lab students did yesterday and really focused on how they knew when and what to multiply or divide. We also spent some time explicitly discussing what the hardware represented and how what they were doing was similar to a chemical reaction. Afterwards, I gave students some more traditional problems using actual chemical reactions.

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Day 127: Wave Equation & Molar Mass

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Physics: Wave Equation

Students used snakey springs data for a relationship between wavelength and frequency and made graphs. I’d hoped to share the graphs today, but there just wasn’t enough time. They spent a lot longer than last year’s students figuring out how to measure the wavelength. Last year, the weather was nice enough to do the lab outside, and a lot of groups found ways to use their spring’s shadow to mark key points on the ground. Today, we had snow, so were stuck doing the lab inside. Students were quick to recognize, based on the units, that the slope of their linearized graph was the speed of the wave.

Chemistry: Molar Mass Practice

Students worked on some practice molar mass problems, then whiteboarded solutions for a gallery walk. A lot of students initially struggled going from a measured mass to a number of moles, but when I asked students to think back to the lab they did a few days ago and tell me how they would figure out how many bolts I had if all they knew was the mass, things clicked pretty quickly.

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