Day 42: Mistakes, Force of Gravity, & Periodic Trends

November 7, 2017November 13, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Mistakes

Since my students are pretty confident on motion graphs, we went straight to mistakes whiteboarding with some stacks of motion graphs. Students were pretty successful at coming up with interesting mistakes. In addition, during the presentations there was a lot of joking around and students were very willing to own unintentional mistakes, which was great to see.

mistake

Physics: Force of Gravity

Students collected data for a relationship between mass and the force of gravity. One of my classes was able to get their graphs and linear regressions done, and were more successful than I expected at “translating” their line of best fit into physics by adding units to the slope and intercept and replacing x and y with appropriate variables.

gravity lab

Chemistry Essentials: Periodic Trends

Today, I handed out periodic tables and students worked on marking them up based on some of the patterns and trends we’ve been talking about the past few days. Yesterday, several students noticed that the sodium card said it reacts strongly with water. Since many also recognized sodium is in table salt, they weren’t entirely convinced it would react with water, so I got out the pure sodium today to drop a piece into some water. I got a small flame during class, which really blew their minds.

Day 41: Board Meeting, Mistakes Game, & Periodic Table

November 6, 2017November 13, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Board Meeting

We had the board meeting for last week’s ramp lab. Students were pretty successful at picking out the key concepts, though the results were a little messier than usual, which made it tough to compare results for different angles and cart masses. Next year, it may be worth having each group do two angles or two masses. I’ll also take more time to introduce students to the photogates. The students in calculus had some great reactions when they realized the slope of the position vs. time² was half the slope of the velocity vs. time graph.

Physics: Mistakes Game

Students played the whiteboard mistakes game with Friday’s free-body diagram problems. Lots of groups had great conversations about the forces on an object already moving and the language of interactions, including many of the ideas from the interaction stations, really helped them convince each other whether or not there should be a force. I also took a few minutes prior to presenting any whiteboards to talk about what it looks like to get something out of this when you’re not presenting, and saw a lot more students than usual with their own work out.

Board with intentional mistake for a ball at the peak of a throw

Chemistry Essentials: Periodic Table

We revisited Friday’s card sort. When I looked over students’ work from Friday, it looked like many of them got stuck on the word “pattern” in the directions because they were looking for something that was all the same, rather than a trend. Today, I had them get out actual periodic tables to use as a guide to set out the cards. From there, it was much easier to scaffold students to identifying interesting trends. Students were also really interested in things like how we discover new elements, or how they get named.

Day 40: Ramp Graphs, FBDs, & Card Sort

November 3, 2017November 13, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

I ended up home sick today.

AP Physics: Ramp Graphs

Students took a longish quiz, then started working on some problems to sketch graphs and motion maps for objects on a ramp. Since we haven’t actually discussed the ramp lab yet, I’m expecting these problems to be a little tricky. There are enough students currently in calculus that I’m hoping they can help their classmates make sense of the graphs. Regardless, I’ll need to make sure I allow time after the ramp lab discussion to make sense of those problems.

Physics: FBDs

I left students a worksheet of interaction diagrams and free-body diagrams. On my last sub day, very few students attempted the problems, I asked my sub to remind students that I’m after an attempt, not right answers. I also asked the sub to collect papers at the end of the hour so I can see where students are at before class on Monday.

Chemistry Essentials: Card Sort

Since we are starting to talk about elements, I left a card sort activity for students to build a version of the periodic table using cards that represent some of the properties of each element. I asked students to snap a photo of their final sort and upload it to Google Classroom so I can see what they came up with.