Day 121: Free Response, Practical, & Quiz

March 23, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today is the last day before spring break.

AP Physics: Free Response

We took some time to look at the free response problems from the tri 2 final exam. A lot of students ran out of time on the final, so we spent some time discussing strategies for time management and steps they can take even when they think they are lost on a problem. We didn’t talk about anything ground-breaking and even the physics seemed pretty clear once we got into it; I think the stress of finals got to students and made it tough to use skills they know.

Physics: Projectile Practical

Students wrapped up the horizontal projectile practical from yesterday. One of the advantages of doing projectiles after energy is I didn’t trip up any groups by switching out the marble for a lighter one. Usually, I get at least some groups that do some wild math to try and figure out what the mass changes, but this year’s students either pointed out the mass never showed up in their calculations or used conservation of energy to show it doesn’t matter.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on balancing and representing chemical reactions. I always have a few students in this course who have trouble staying quiet once they are finished; today, all of the conversations I shut down while students were testing were about problems on the quiz, which was pretty awesome. I felt a little bad telling them it wasn’t the right time for those conversations, especially with how passionate the conversations were.

Day 120: Practicals & Demos

March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Central Force Practical

I got out the record player and, as a class, we found where a mass starts to slip when the player is at 33 1/3 rpm. Students then calculated what radius they should place the same mass at when the record player is at 45 rpm. Since the velocity depends on the radius, the math got a little hairy, but students were pretty successful working through it and making sense of how all the variables were connected.

Physics: Projectile Practical

Students rolled a marble down a short ramp to turn it into a horizontal and predicted where it should hit the floor. Both my classes were able to complete it with less support than I expected. After each group managed to hit the target (an old carbon-copy referral form), I asked them to predict where, relative to their first marble, a lighter one should land.

Chemistry Essentials: Demos

Students balanced a few different chemical reactions, then I demonstrated those reactions. Most of the students seem to be getting pretty confident with both skills and enjoyed the demonstrations. The thing I struggled with is the demos felt very separate from the balancing since they did confirm or otherwise add to the work students had done. I’m wondering if there is something I could have done differently to connect those two pieces better.

Day 119: Whiteboarding

March 21, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics: Central Force Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded some problems dealing with a central net force. My students who have taken Astronomy are pretty excited with the connections they are seeing to orbits. I also pulled up a simulation of Newton’s Cannon to talk about a problem that asks why the ISS doesn’t crash into the earth.

Physics: Projectile Motion Mistakes

We did the mistakes game, focusing on the diagrams and initial set-up for problems rather than all of the math. There are a lot of long silences, so I might try giving students some structure for additional pre-discussion with their lab groups next time. Maybe students could do a gallery walk and jot down some potential questions for each whiteboard. There are a lot of groups opting to use “vertical” energy to solve for key values, which is pretty cool.

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Mistakes Game

We did the mistakes game with yesterday’s problems on balancing chemical equations. I’ve got the opposite problem of my physics class, where lots of students have things to say, which leads to too many people talking at once. Most of my contributions end up being to re-focus the discussion or redirect students, rather content-related questions to move things along. I’m okay with this problem, even if I’m not sure how to solve it yet.

Day 118: Board Meeting, Projectile Problems, & Balancing

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Board Meeting

We had our board meeting for yesterday’s lab on centripetal force. I approached it as three mini board meetings since students had done experiments for how three different variables affect the force. The units on slope ended up being a very powerful way for students to see the connections between their three graphs. It was especially exciting when we got to the force vs. mass graph and students saw the connections to Newton’s 2nd Law. One class noticed the slope on the force vs. 1/radius graph has units of Joules, but I’m not sure of the significance of that yet.

Physics: Projectiles

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems for a gallery walk. They are consistently viewing free-fall as just a special case of models we’ve already covered, which made the problems pretty easy. Afterward, students started working problems for horizontal projectiles.

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Reactions

After some discussion about the labs from the past few days, students worked on some problems balancing chemical equations. The students who started by sketching a particle diagram were generally very successful at seeing how to balance. A few students got tripped up determining when individual letters in a formula represent individual atoms, especially when the formula included a polyatomic ion, but were getting the hang of it after a couple problems.

Day 117: Central Net Force, Free Fall, & Balancing Equations

March 19, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Central Net Force

Students worked on an activity in Pivot Interactives to find how speed, mass, and radius affect the centripetal force. One of the great things about this time of year is my students not only have a lot of skills, they are very confident in those skills, so I got to listen to good conversations about experimental design, uncertainty, and linearization without stepping in to do any coaching.

Physics: Free Fall

Students worked on some free-fall problems. There was a pretty even split between groups who relied on velocity vs. time graphs and groups who relied on energy. For the first time, I had a couple of groups draw separate v-t graphs for when the object was rising and when it was falling, which helped them organize their thinking.

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Equations

Students used the PhET Balancing Chemical Equations sim to start exploring what it means for a chemical equation to be balanced. This not only seemed to help students make sense of balancing, but to do some retroactive meaning-making on the work we’ve been doing on representing reactions.

Day 116: Multiple Choice, Reaction Time, & Conservation of Mass

March 16, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Multiple Choice

Students took a quiz on rotational kinematics and we fired up Plickers to discuss some multiple choice problems a lot of students got wrong on the final. There were a lot of great conversations and students generally felt very comfortable pointing out errors in their own thinking. There were a few problems that most students got right on their first try today, which was interesting. I asked my students about it, and they said they were feeling pretty mentally fried during their final, especially since it was on the second day of exams, which makes sense.

Physics: Reaction Time

Students dropped rulers to calculate their reaction times. Students were pretty successful at designing an experiment and sketching a velocity vs. time graph for the ruler, but annotating and setting up equations was much more challenging than I’d hoped. Doing the math with v-t graphs just isn’t sticking for a lot of students this year. I think the problem is a lot of them are not attaching meaning to the variables or numbers, which makes the annotations on the graphs and the formulas we use something to memorize. I need to keep working on supporting my students in using the graphs and other diagrams as tools for meaning-making.

Chemistry Essentials: Conservation of Mass

Students did a chemical reaction in a plastic bag to see the conservation of mass and practice translating between different representations of chemical reactions. Time got a little tight because I was not able to have a balance at every table; next time, I would be better off delaying the lab if another class needs the balances on the same day. Students still got a kick out of the chemical reaction.

Day 115: Mistakes Whiteboarding

March 15, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Rotation Whiteboarding

Students did mistakes whiteboarding with yesterday’s problems on rotational kinematics. Several of the mistakes lead to some great conversations about what information angular motion graphs do and do not convey.

Physics: Projectile Whiteboarding

These classes also did mistakes whiteboarding with yesterday’s problems on velocity vs. time graphs for projectiles. There were a lot of good mistakes, but a lot of long silences. I need to keep working on making sure my classroom is a comfortable place for intellectual risks.

Chemistry Essentials: Representing Reactions

I finished out a day of mistakes whiteboarding with some problems going between equations, statements, and particle diagrams for chemical reactions. The main challenge was keeping the class in a single conversation since so many students had questions about the whiteboards, which is a great problem to have. Students also started consciously seeking out new voices when they realized one student was finding most of the mistakes, which was also great.

Day 114: Rotation Problems, v-t Graphs, & Representing Reactions

March 14, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today’s walkout happened to fall during homeroom, so it didn’t have much impact on my classes. A group of senior students organized a short march around the school, and I was very proud watching students march past the windows of my classroom.

All three of my classes were doing problems on a worksheet, so I failed to get good pictures of their work.

AP Physics: Rotation Problems

Students worked through some problems on angular motion with an emphasis on angle vs. time and angular velocity vs. time graphs. The problems went very smoothly; I can most likely count on not needing the whole period to whiteboard the problems tomorrow.

Physics: v-t Graphs

Students worked on some conceptual problems sketching and interpreting velocity vs. time graphs for projectiles. Students are feeling very confident about projectile motion, which is good to see. There are also a lot of great conversations where groups are self-correcting their answers, which is exactly what I’m after.

Chemistry Essentials: Representing Reactions

I introduced students to the notation for chemical reactions and had them practice translating between equations, statements, and particle diagrams. Some students are struggling to keep track of all the details, which is what I expect when they first see the equations.

Day 113: Board Meeting, Projectiles, & Formula Writing Review

March 13, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded the results of yesterday’s lab. Students were very successful making key connections to linear motion. I didn’t specify when students should set time equal to zero or how they should handle it when a dot passed zero radians, so there was some variation in the graphs, but students were able to make sense of those differences.

Physics: Projectiles

Today, I used an activity Kelly O’Shea came up with based on a post from Dan Meyer. I gave students printouts of an image showing half the path of a basketball, then had them draw lines to see the horizontal and vertical motion of the ball. Students were once again very successful at making the connections I was after.

Chemistry Essentials: Formula Writing Review

To prep students for translating between representations of chemical reactions, we reviewed writing chemical formulas based on the name. I reviewed electron diagrams, but did not require students to sketch them. However, most students chose to sketch them as a way of thinking through the formulas, which was great.

Day 112: Rotation, Free-Fall, & Skew Dice

March 12, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today was the first day of a new trimester.

AP Physics: Rotation

Students used Pivot Interactives to make angular position vs. time graphs for several points on a disk with a constant angular velocity and a point on an accelerating disk. Back in September, my students who took calculus last year were able to make a lot of connections when we did graphs for linear motion. One of the great things about returning to circular motion now is my students currently taking calculus now have enough background knowledge that they were able to make some very similar connections today.

Physics: Free-Fall

To kick off projectile motion, students worked through a worksheet I got from Michael Lerner where they were asked to describe the motion of a falling orange using a variety of tools from earlier in the year. This seemed to help some student synthesize and connect a lot of ideas from earlier in the year.

Chemistry Essentials: Skew Dice

A lot of my students haven’t had chemistry since first trimester, so I wanted to reestablish some class norms. I used Frank Noschese’s subversive grouping to get students into group, then had them whiteboard a CER to answer whether skew dice are fair. Time got a little tight, so a lot of groups collected less data than I normally would push for, but in the follow-up discussion, that gave us the opportunity to talk about the value of getting as much data as possible.