Review

Day 107: Final Review

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Today was originally scheduled for professional development. Last week, it got switched to a regular school day to make up for some of our snow days.  In spite of the short notice and another round of snow, the majority of students were in school today. All three of my classes

AP Physics 1

Students got a mix of goal-less problems and released free-response problems. The goal-less problems got a mixed response, partly because we haven’t done a lot this year, but the people who liked them really liked them.

Physics

Students worked on a packet of problems from throughout the trimester.

Chemistry Essentials

Students did mistakes whiteboarding with particle diagrams connecting to each of the topics from this tri.

Day 90 (finally!): Vocab, Projectiles, & Review

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Last week, we cancelled school Monday through Thursday due to snow and cold, then had a planned staff development day on Friday, so students ended up with a full week off school.

AP Physics 1: Vocab

On some grading I did on our surprise week off, I noticed a lot of my students were not distinguishing between different concepts in their writing (I really wanted to quote Inigo Montoya while I was grading). Today, with some inspiration from Kelli Warble, students did some whiteboarding to clarify important terms by starting with the tool they would use to measure each quantity. Students said they found it helpful; I’m hoping it will pay dividends as we move into simple harmonic motion.

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Physics: Projectiles

I am a part of the Pivot Interactive’s Chemistry Fellows program.

Students used a video in Pivot Interactives that shows three views of a projectile to make position vs. time and velocity vs. time graphs for each component of the motion.

pivot projectile

Chemistry Essentials: Review

The quiz on phase changes had been scheduled for last Monday. Since its been a while, we took some time to whiteboard a problem with frozen broth heating up on a stove. I broke the problem into smaller steps, and had groups pass the marker after each step so the person writing on the whiteboard varied.

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Day 55: Practicals, Multi-Model Problems, & Whiteboarding

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AP Physics 1: Practicals

To review for final exams, I set up a couple of different lab practicals and let students choose which combination they’d like to work on.

Physics: Multi-Model Problems

Students worked on some problems that required them to use multiple models to prepare for the final exam. Last spring, the other physics teacher and I talked about trying to do a better job of spiraling content and, while we’ve taken what I consider some good steps, I could tell this is something we still need to improve on based where I saw students struggling today.

Chemistry Essentials: Whiteboarding

Each group picked a section of the review to be the class experts on. They white boarded their answers to the revenant problems and answered questions from classmates who were stuck on that section. The students who made use of the time seemed to leave feeling very good about the review.

 

Day 54: Model Summaries & Review

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AP Physics 1 & Physics: Model Summaries

In both courses, I started the review by asking students to whiteboard model summaries for what we’ve covered so far this year. I asked them to sketch examples of the main diagram types, key formulas we used, and anything else they thought was important. It helped to frame each model as a tool kit and the model summary as a reminder of what tools are in each kit.

 

Chemistry Essentials: Review

In this class, I stuck with a pretty traditional review with a selection of problems from each topic so far this year.

Day 165: Final Review

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With the seniors done last Friday, I only saw my Chemistry Essentials class today. Today was also our last day of regular classes. Students worked on their final review, though a lot of students struggled to stay on task today. I also saw a lot of students copying answers from each other in order to get it done, rather than engaging in a conversation about the problems. I think it would have been better to have students do some whiteboarding to force the discourse, rather than allowing them to work with their lab groups today. A lot of students also don’t see the connection between making sure they understand the formative work and their success on the assessments, so that is something I will need to think about how to work on for next year.

Day 164: Final Review

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Friday was the last day of school for seniors, so I will only have Chemistry Essentials this week.

Today they started working on a final review. The curriculum is more disjointed than I’d like, so I took the opportunity to help students draw some connections by writing the entire review to focus on a single reaction. The students who were working on the review made good progress.

The class is also about 1/3 seniors, so the class size is down to 22 this week. It was amazing what a difference the smaller class made in terms of my ability to interact with students and provide meaningful help.

Day 161: Project Work & Whiteboarding

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There was some extra chaos today and I dropped the ball on getting photos.

AP Physics: Project Work

Students worked on wrapping up their final projects. A lot of them are getting excited about presenting tomorrow. There are several students who had very ambitious proposals that I encouraged to scale back their project who have ended sticking with their original plan because they are enjoying the project, which is awesome. One student worked out the force on his legs at several key points during a hurdle race, along with trying to find the optimal launch speed for jumping over a hurdle.

Physics: Review Whiteboarding

Students did some more whiteboarding to review for tomorrow’s final. When sketching diagrams for a spring, a lot of groups had trouble with which direction the spring force was acting.

Chemistry Essentials: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems. The two hours before this class, there had been some excitement related to senior pranks, so the students were much more keyed up than usual and it was tough for them to stay focused. I also found students were having trouble keeping track of  a lot of the details on the bar charts, which isn’t surprising given how quickly we’ve been moving through this content.

Day 160: Graphite Wire, Pendulum Review, & Energy Bar Charts

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Today was the start of seniors’ last week of school.

AP Physics: Graphite Wire

Students continued to work on their final projects. One student used a graphite pencil to sketch “wires” on a sheet of paper and worked on collecting data on the potential difference at the LED. I wasn’t sure if a pencil would leave a thick enough layer of graphite, so got pretty excited when she got this to work.

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Its hard to see, but the LED is glowing!

Physics: Pendulum Review

With the final exam starting on Thursday, we took some time today to start reviewing. I started with some pendulum questions that I expected to be pretty quick and easy, but it took a lot longer than I hoped. I didn’t do as nice a job of spiraling as I would have liked this spring, so students were very rusty on some of the concepts they needed.

 

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Chemistry Essentials: Energy Bar Charts

Students worked on energy bar charts for chemical reactions. The hardest part for a lot of students was parsing what exactly was happening at each snapshot for the energy bar carts; in general, I haven’t pushed the idea that some representations are like a photo that shows a specific instant while others are like a movie that shows change over an extended period, which would have helped today.

Day 109: Free Response & Review

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Yesterday was a snow day and tomorrow is the start of final exams, so today was a little tricky.

AP Physics: Free Response

With the AP exam looming, I gave students most of a practice exam as their final. Today, they took the free response portion. I took out a few problems to make sure there was no rotation and to get it reasonable for a 55 minute class period.

Physics: Final Review

Students worked on a final review that asked them to apply several different models to the same scenario. A few groups opted to work on whiteboards, instead of on paper, which was just fine with me. A lot of students went back to drawing their free-body diagrams without sketching in context, like the surface of a hill or ramp, which lead to some mistakes, but most students were able to get on track once they added in that surface.

Chemistry Essentials: Final Review

Students worked on a pretty traditional final review. The particle diagrams finally seem to be clicking for a lot of my students, which is great to see. I am seeing some students check out since it is fairly set whether they will pass or fail; if I teach this course next year, I need to spend some time this summer thinking about how to make final exams meaningful to my students.

Day 108: Experimental Design, Collisions, & Particle Diagrams

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AP Physics: Experimental Design

Yesterday, students worked on an experimental design problem from the 2017 AP exam. Today, they exchanged work and used the scoring guide to assign points and give each other feedback. A lot of students were pretty nervous about giving their work to someone else; I think the simple act of recording points on a very tough problem raised the stakes more than I expected. Students still said they found the activity useful, so that may help ease the discomfort if we trade papers again.

Physics: Collisions

Students whiteboarded some of yesterday’s problems before taking a quiz on conservation of momentum. I had some students who actually consider conservation of momentum easier than impulse on a single object; one student told me its just like energy, but they don’t have to think about the different types.

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Chemistry Essentials: Whiteboarding

Students have been struggling with what particle diagrams are intended to show, so we started by brainstorming a list of characteristics of a good particle diagram and having some discussion about why they are useful. Afterward, we whiteboarded yesterday’s problems and did a gallery walk. This seemed to help reinforce the purpose of a particle diagram for a lot of students.