Day 128: Problems, Tuning Forks, & Stoichiometry

April 10, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

I was on a field trip today, so had a sub.

AP Physics 1: Balanced Torque Problems

Students worked some problems with balanced torques. I wish I’d edited the worksheet to include some problems revisiting forces, but ran out of time last week. I’ll be interested to see if and how my students used the area model I showed them yesterday.

Physics: Tuning Forks

Students did a lab playing with tuning forks to start building some ideas about sound waves. There’s usually some good discussion that I’m a little sorry I missed.

Chemistry Essentials: Stoichiometry

Students started doing stoichiometry by using nuts, bolts, and washers to represent different types of atoms, making it possible for them to “see” how many moles they have and measure the masses very directly.

Day 127: Board Meeting, Slinkys, & Molar Mass

April 9, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Torque Board Meeting

We had our board meeting to get to the definition of torque. As expected, in the class where I had students plot the ratio of the forces on one axis and the ratio of the radii on the other, results were rough and I had to step in. In my other section, results came out beautifully and students were quick to figure out why their graphs had intercepts. I also introduced students to Brian Frank’s area models for torque, which students seemed to grasp.

Physics: Slinkys

We used slinkys to start figuring out some ideas about longitudinal waves. Students were pretty successful at noticing the things I wanted them to notice. As with transverse waves, we tied some ribbons on the spring to help track the particle motion.

Chemistry Essentials: Molar Mass Lab

I got out samples of several different materials, and had students weigh a sample and figure out how many moles they had. Not the most dramatic lab, but it was some good practice.

Day 125: Assessment & Problems

April 5, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Assessment

Students took their central net force quiz. Most seemed to feel pretty good about it, even though we moved through the content quickly.

Physics: Wave Problems

Students worked on problems using what we’ve learned this week. The problems went very smoothly.

Chemistry Essentials: Molar Mass Problems

Students worked on some problems combining molar mass with balancing chemical reactions.

Day 124: Gallery Walk, Board Meeting, & Mistakes Whiteboarding

April 4, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Gallery Walk

Students did a gallery walk of some problems dealing with central net force and universal gravitation. There was a lot of good discussion as students worked on their problem, but I’m not sure how much students looked at the other problems.

Physics: Board Meeting

We had a board meeting for the snakey spring lab looking for a relationship between wavelength and frequency.

This group used floor tiles as their distance measurement

Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Whiteboarding

Students worked some problems translating between molar mass and moles of a substance, then did some mistakes whiteboarding to go over the problems.

chem molar mistake.jpg

Day 123: Board Meeting, Snakey Springs, & Molar Mass

April 3, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Yesterday we had ACT testing for juniors. Seniors had an off-campus learning day.

AP Physics 1: Central Net Force Board Meeting

For yesterday’s off-campus learning day, my students finished collecting data in Pivot Interactives on central net forces. I really enjoyed the discussion of the force vs. mass graphs, when the class realized the units on the slope were the units on acceleration, so we had F=ma.

Physics: Snakey Springs

Students used the snakey springs to collect data on a relationship between frequency and wavelength for standing waves.

Chemistry Essentials: Molar Mass

Students used nuts, bolts, and washers to represent different elements in order to discover how to find the molar mass of a compound. Afterward, they tried extending what they’d found to actual compounds. Not only were they very successful at extending their results, their work represented different ways of thinking about polyatomic ions, which was cool.

This group wants you to know they’re my favorite

Day 122: Central Net Force, Snakey Springs, & Gallery Walk

April 1, 2019April 3, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Central Net Force

Tomorrow is an off-campus learning day for seniors and freshmen, so I assigned my students to collect and graph data from a Pivot Interactives to determine what affects the force required to keep an object moving in a circle. To prime them, we spent some time today whiteboarding to get at the idea that an object moving in a circle must be experiencing unbalanced forces. Both sections came to a consensus on the free-body diagram pretty quickly and had exactly the conversations I wanted them to on the way.

Physics: Snakey Springs

Students played with snakey springs to start building some ideas about waves. We had them tie a ribbon onto the spring to make it easier to track the particle motion of a small piece of the wave.

Chemistry Essentials: Gallery Walk

We did a gallery walk of Friday’s problems before moving on to the balancing quiz. A lot of students opted to use the Mathlink cubes during the quiz, which I decided I’m okay with.

Day 121: Quiz & Balancing

March 29, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Circuits Quiz

Students took their quiz over circuits. Afterward, we spent some time using Plickers to practice multiple choice questions. We had some good discussion about how to identify what’s most important in the text of a problem.

Physics: Oscillating Spring Quiz

Students took their quiz on oscillating springs. I haven’t started grading them yet, but students were feeling pretty good.

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Reactions

Students worked on some balancing problems that involve polyatomic ions in parentheses. The idea of distributing a subscript is tricky for a lot of students, but they made good progress.

Day 119: Problems, Lab Practical, & Balancing

March 27, 2019March 26, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

I had a sub today.

AP Physics 1: Circuit Problems

I introduced students to Trevor Register’s KVL diagrams yesterday. Today, I had them work on some problems using the diagram and Kirchhoff’s Laws.

Physics: Lab Practical

Students started a lab practical where they using a spring to find an unknown mass two different ways. I gave them some structure that should steer them to use Hooke’s Law, then the period of the spring. I’ll be curious to see how it went.

Chemistry Essentials: Balancing

Students worked on some problems balancing chemical reactions. At my co-teacher’s suggestion, we got some Mathlink cubes for students to use as a manipulative. I’m curious to see how it goes; when I used some on Tuesday, they seemed to help make balancing more concrete for students.

Day 118: Board Meeting, Mistakes Whiteboarding, & Conservation of Mass

March 26, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Kirchhoff Board Meeting

We had a board meeting where students shared the rules they’d come up with for current and potential difference, which lead into Kirchhoff’s rules. My students missed some details, especially around current, that I wanted them to see; normally, I would have sent them back to the lab to experiment a little more, but I ended up pointing out the info in the interest of time.

Physics: Mistakes Whiteboarding

We did some mistakes whiteboarding with yesterday’s problems. There are some students who haven’t had me before, so this was their first exposure to mistakes whiteboarding. A few of them started laughing and making some comments when a group clearly had some clearly unintentional mistakes, so I stepped in more than usual and, with help from students who’ve done this before, managed to shift the tone pretty quickly. I’ve been more conscious this year overall that I need to reset the culture in my classroom each trimester, but I dropped the ball today and didn’t revisit what it looks like to contribute during this kind of whiteboard discussion.

Chemistry Essentials: Conservation of Mass Lab

Students did a reaction in a Ziploc bag to see the conservation of mass in action. Students got good results, but balancing the reaction was tricky. The reaction is one of the trickier ones I ask students to balance in this course, so this may have been better near the end of the unit.

Day 116: Whiteboarding

March 22, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Coulomb’s Law Whiteboarding

We spent some time doing some practice multiple choice problems, then used whiteboards for a gallery walk of yesterday’s problems on Coulomb’s Law and Ohm’s Law.

Physics: Spring Representations Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded various representations for an object vibrating on a spring, then we did some discussing to come to an agreement on what those representations should look like.

Chemistry Essentials: Mistake Whiteboarding

We finished going through the whiteboards students prepped earlier this week for a round of mistakes whiteboarding. I’m getting excited to start balancing chemical equations with these students next week; several students have started pointing out when the number of a given element changes between the products and reactants as a sign that something is wrong.