Instructional Strategies

Day 4: Bar Charts & CTSR

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

My sister is getting married this weekend, so today was my first sub of the year.

Physical Science: Energy Bar Charts

Students used the textbook to define kinetic and potential energy. I included some questions to try and connect the definitions to yesterday’s observations in the PhET Conservation of Energy sim. On Monday, we’ll have some class discussion so I can see what connections they made. Students will also be doing a few energy bar charts.


 Physics: CTSR
The 11th and 12th grade teachers in my department decided to base our PLC goal on Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning so that we can focus on integrating more inquiry and critical thinking into our courses. My students are taking it as a pre-test today. Most of the questions are scored in pairs, so students are submitting answers in a Google Form that will automatically calculate scores. Once they finish, students will practice translating between position vs. time graphs, velocity vs. time graphs, and verbal representations by starting the Motion Detector Lab. On Monday, we’ll add in motion maps and get out the detectors.

Day 3: Defining Types of Energy & First Board Meeting

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Physical Science: Energy Types

Students used PhET’s Energy Skate Park sim to begin exploring energy. Their directions were to open up the bar graph, then find as many ways as they could to change the size of each bar. Tomorrow, their observations will lead into the definitions for kinetic and potential energy.

Energy skate park screenshot

PhET’s Energy Skate Park

Physics: First Board Meeting

Students prepped whiteboards with their results from the Buggy Lab, then we had our first board meeting. I talked more than I wanted to during the meeting, partly because I was rushing to get students ready for a sub tomorrow and partly because I didn’t take enough time to set expectations or let students pre-discuss in smaller groups. Next time, I want to try using Casey Rutherford’s Observations, Claims, & Evidence structure to provide students with a little more scaffolding. My students were very willing to speak up and take risks during the board meetings, so I’m excited to see how future ones go!

Student whiteboard

Student whiteboard

IMG_0198

Another student whiteboard

Day 2: Groupwork Norms & Buggy Lab

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Physical Science: Groupwork Norms

As a follow up to yesterday’s Marshmallow Challenge, we had some discussion about the importance of mistakes and revision in building a tower, then compared that to learning science. Groups also reflected on what they did that helped them work together effectively. Those reflections lead to class-wide norms for group work. One suggestion was “Don’t copy someone else’s epic fails”; it got edited to “Learn from others’ mistakes”, but a piece of me wishes we’d kept the original wording.

Physics: Buggy Lab

Students collected data with the constant speed buggies based on the procedures groups planned yesterday. Just about every group ran into at least one issue that forced them to rethink the details of their approach. That lead to some great conversations within groups about balancing ideal data collection against what’s possible in the lab, including what makes data “good enough.”