Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their solutions to yesterday’s problem. In my class of 15, I had students present while in my class of 35, I tried a gallery walk, instead. I really liked the gallery walk with the big class; it gets hard to hear from everyone with that many people in the room, so talking about each board in smaller groups made it possible for more students to both ask and answer questions.

Chemistry: pH Lab

Students did a lab to find the pH of household chemicals. Students did a nice job of connecting the properties of each chemical to the properties of acids and bases.

Physics: Magnetic Force Problems

Students worked on some problems calculating the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire and a moving charge. Tomorrow, we’ll whiteboard the problems.

One of my students was eager to tell me about his visit to University of Minnesota-Duluth on Friday. He got a chance to hear from a physics professor about the use of inquiry, collaboration, and discovery learning in the physics courses, including why UMD takes that approach. The student was very excited to tell me UMD’s intro physics sounds just like my class, but with calculus, and that I must know what I’m doing if I’m teaching the same way as a professor. February and end of tri are always draining, so it was nice to get this boost from a student.

Chemistry: Gallery Walk

A lot of students in this class are very uncomfortable presenting whiteboards, so I decided to do a gallery walk. Each pair prepared a whiteboard of their solution to one of the problems and I checked their work. Then, one partner took their sheet and visited other whiteboards while the other partner stayed put to answer any questions on their solution. One student went above and beyond writing out the work for their solution, so her board was a very popular stop!

Physics: Electromagnets

We finished Friday’s lab exploring electromagnets and students compared results. I had students look for as many ways as they could to change the properties of the field around the electromagnet. I was surprised to have several groups decide to try flipping the nail in their electromagnet to test what effect that had. I was glad they did, because it reinforced that the nail itself was not the source of the magnetism.

Chemistry: Neutralizaiton

I did some grade checks during class on Friday, so the students weren’t asking very many questions on the neutralization worksheet and, as a result, almost no one had gotten past the example I did on Friday. We spent some time revisiting how to write the equation for a neutralization reaction and students got some time to work.