Review

Day 56: Toilet Paper Drops & Review

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AP Physics: Toilet Paper Drops

Students wrapped up yesterday’s lab practical and got  chance to try dropping their toilet paper rolls. Groups were very successful. Especially in my second hour, I was really pleased that, without any prompting, the students in groups that finished early split up to look for other groups that could use some help.

 

Earth Science: Review

I had students review for Friday’s final by generating some possible test questions for each unit on a whiteboard, then trading boards with another group. When I put up the title of the first unit, there was a moment of panic as students tried to remember what it was even about, but they pretty quickly turned to their notebooks to remind themselves of the major concepts and look for ideas of questions to ask, which is exactly was I was hoping for.

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Day 34: Springs & Review

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AP Physics: Spring Force

Students looked for a relationship between the force on a spring and the amount it stretches. I rushed the follow-up discussion since I’m going to be out the rest of the week, so I want to make sure to revisit some of the key ideas next week, especially when it comes to interpreting the graphs.

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Earth Science: Review

I used the same review activity from earlier units where students work with their lab group to write some questions for each learning target, then pass their questions on to another group. Overall, I could tell my students were struggling more to come up with questions than in some of the earlier units. I think a lot of that stems from my own struggles interpreting the learning targets and connecting them to the established lessons. If I’m not clear on what the learning targets mean or how everything connects, my students definitely won’t be.

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Day 22: Wrap-Up & Review

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AP Physics: Lots of Wrap-Up

Today was a lot of wrapping things up. We started by whiteboarding both the accelerated disk and free fall Direct Measurement Videos with some brief discussions about each. At this point, I was just trying to get students to recognize the parallels between angular acceleration and linear acceleration, so that didn’t feel too rushed. The discussion on free fall did skip over some important points, so I’ll be revisiting that topic next week. This is the first year I’ve included uncertainty in my class, and I could tell during the discussion that my students are starting to internalize those concepts, which added some nice layers to the discussion.

We also took some time to try and finish the lab practical we started Monday. Students are rolling a steel marble down a ramp with the goal of landing it in a tumble buggy driving by. Today, I threw them for a loop by adding that they need to pull off the same thing with glass and acrylic marbles, but the only new measurements they can take are mass. With the time for discussions, only a few groups got to test, so I’ll be making some adjustments next week to make sure students have a chance to finish.

 

Earth Science: Review

Students have another quiz tomorrow, so I repeated my review activity from last time. Students worked in groups to write a few questions for each learning target, then periodically traded whiteboards with another table to try and answer another group’s questions. This time, students were coming up with some deeper questions, which was great to see.

Day 9: Board Meeting & Review

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AP Physics: Board Meeting

Students sketched their distance vs. time and angle vs. time graphs from the rotating disk Direct Measurement Video. I’d assumed students would just use the frames displayed in the video to find the time directly, but a lot of groups decided to treat when a dot was at a position of zero as t = 0, which gave us a good opportunity to talk about some experimental design decisions, which reinforced what the intercept represents on a graph like this.

 

Earth Science: Review

As a school, we’ve been working on having students write meaningful questions as part of our focus on Cornell notes. While I don’t do many notes, I decided to piggy back on this by having students write possible test questions for each learning target. Periodically, I had groups trade whiteboards and work on answering the questions another group had come up with. At this point, the questions were fairly superficial, which isn’t surprising since we just skimmed the surface of the topics in this unit and students haven’t had much practice or feedback writing questions yet.

Day 169: Final Review

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Chemistry: Final Review

Friday was the last day of school for seniors, so this week I only have my chemistry class and about one-third of those students are done. The remaining students started working on their final review, which is essentially reworking problems from this trimester’s assessments. I was a little concerned that students would check out since several pushed back pretty vocally when I gave them a task on senior skip day, but they worked pretty well today.

Day 165: Final Review & Isotopes

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Physics: Final Review

Students continued working through the lab practicals to review for the final exam. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the review has been doing, though a lot of groups were confused about what they were being asked to do on the standing waves practical. I need to revise the directions to make it clearer that they should calculate the length of the tube needed to resonate, then use the materials to test it.

 

Find the length of the tube to make a tuning fork resonate
Find the index of refraction for vegetable oil
Find the mass of the washers
Use at least 3 mirrors to hit a target with a laser pointer

Chemistry: Isotopes

Students used what they know about isotopes to determine how many pennies in a sealed container were made before 1982 vs. after. They struggled to make the connection between the lab and what we’ve done so far on isotopes, so I need to make some changes to help students better build that link.

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Day 163: Final Review & Half Life Data Analysis

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Physics: Final Review

Students started reviewing for next week’s final exam. I put together a lab practical for each of the four major topics from this trimester, and groups can pick and chose which ones they complete.

  • Simple Harmonic Motion: Given a 50 g mass, spring, ruler, and stopwatch, find the mass of a set of washers.
  • Mechanical Waves: Predict what length an adjustable tube needs to be for a given tuning fork to resonate when (a) both ends are open and (b) one end is plugged.
  • Reflection: Given the placement of a laser pointer and a target, use at least three mirrors to direct the beam to the target.
  • Refraction: Determine the index of refraction of oil.

There was a lot of demand for the simple harmonic motion and mechanical waves practicals since those were the oldest content. I’d prepared three sets of equipment for each practical, and ended up putting together a few more simple harmonic motion sets during my largest class, especially since they just did the index of refraction task for water yesterday.

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Chemistry: Half Life Data Analysis

Students graphed their half life data from yesterday, then we compared their results to their predictions and the class totals, including data from previous years. We had some good conversation about the role randomness plays in the lab and why its useful to have data that relies on thousands of pennies, rather than just the 100 students had.

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Day 114: Gallery Walk

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Tomorrow is the start of final exams, so both classes today went over their final review assignments. I decided to go with a gallery walk, with each group preparing a whiteboard for a different problem. Then, one member of each group stayed put to answer questions while the others moved around the room to check out the other whiteboards. Especially in my largest class, I really like that the gallery walk gets more students involved in the conversation. A few students decided to play the “reverse mistakes game” during the gallery walk by pretending to hold a misconception as they asked questions at a whiteboard.

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This group asked if they could try their problem with both constant acceleration and energy transfer.

 

Day 113: More Final Review

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Students in both courses continued to work on their final review assignments. After a three-day weekend, both classes were much less focused than they were on Thursday. In chemistry, I talked to them a bit about the strategies I saw during class, and how they could improve on them. The students who were working pretty well on Thursday seemed receptive and tried to refine their approach. There were some groups that had great conversations about the problems on the review. In physics, I saw a lot less collaboration than on Thursday and a lot more off-task behavior in general. A lot of students talked about feeling fried from studying and working on final papers or projects over the weekend, and I saw more students working on other homework than usual. I think a lot of students are just feeling fried by the end of the tri. Tomorrow, I’ll switch to something more structured, especially since it will be time to go over the reviews.