Day 36-40: Newton’s Laws & Whiteboarding

November 1, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Newton’s 2nd Law

Students used a modified half-atwoods to find a relationship between force and acceleration. The quality of the results varied a lot. I’ve been talking to the AP Chemistry teacher, and we think part of what’s going on is students aren’t often asked to use their data in meaningful ways before they get to physics, so it doesn’t make sense to take the time and attention to collect data carefully. I need to put some thought into how to help students place value on good data collection and build the skills required to collect good data.

After developing Newton’s 2nd Law, we spent some time combining the new equation with vector addition diagrams. Students are starting to buy in to the diagrams as useful thinking tools, which is always a lot of fun to see.

Whiteboard with a data table with values for acceleration and force, a graph of force vs. acceleration, an equation for the line of best fit, and a value for the total mass the group used. The slope of the line of best fit is very close to the total mass.

Physics: Free-Body Diagrams

Students have been working on Newton’s 1st Law and drawing free-body diagrams. We have some problems that often lead to great discussion with mistakes whiteboarding, but I’ve been struggling to get students in one of my hours to speak up during whole-class discussions. To help with that, I tried doing a short gallery walk prior to any of the whiteboard presentations this week. Once the whiteboards were ready, I had students visit each board with their group and make notes on their worksheet about potential mistakes they saw or questions they had. During the whole-class discussion, there was a lot less silence and we heard from some students who don’t often speak up, which was exactly what I was hoping for. I think it also helped that I shared those goals with students before we started. When a student joked those goals aren’t going to happen, I assured her I’m very stubborn and am convinced the class can get there.

Days 32-35: Newton’s 3rd Law & Newton’s 1st Law

October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

This was another short week. Parent-teacher conferences were on Thursday night, so Friday was scheduled as a professional development day.

AP Physics 1: Newton’s 3rd Law

This week our focus was on Newton’s 3rd Law. Students predicted which cart would experience a larger force during various collisions, which we then tested using a pair of carts with force sensors and hoop springs. In my grad class this semester, we’ve been doing a lot of talking about the ways language students use can mask meaningful understanding, which got me thinking about how I can make better use of students’ predictions. This year, I tried being very explicit that our task was to find the useful ideas in students’ predictions and to translate those useful ideas into the language physicists use. There was a great moment where a student said “So the force and the result of the force are different things, but we were treating them as the same”, which I couldn’t have planned better.

I also took a page from Brian Frank this week and used some magnetic hooks for an easy setup of a static forces lab practical.

Find the unknown mass using the spring scale readings, a protractor, and a ruler.

Physics: Newton’s 1st Law

This week was about developing the idea of a force and Newton’s 1st Law using interaction stations and the bowling ball lab. A few students were resistant to actually trying the bowling ball lab this year, rather than actually testing whether what they expected worked, so I had to push some groups to really explore getting the bowling ball moving with a constant speed. Once they got started, however, there was some great discussion.

Days 29-31: Vector Addition Diagrams & CAPM Practical

October 17, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

This was a three-day week since public schools closed on Thursday and Friday for the state teachers union conference.

AP Physics 1: Vector Addition Diagrams

Students started the week by doing Kelly O’Shea’s forces representations card sort. I used the card sort to introduce vector addition diagrams, and students easily recognized key aspects of the VAD. The rest of the week, we worked on applying VADs to solve problems. They are successfully applying the VADs, but aren’t feeling confident in their skills just yet.

A completed forces representations card sort categorized into balanced and unbalanced forces.

Physics: CAPM Practical

After wrapping up some problems using the constant acceleration model, students started working on a practical to figure out where to start a marble on a ramp so that it lands in a passing buggy. We ran out of time for students to test their calculations. While students made good progress, many are uncertain of their skills; I’m hoping that completing the practical on Monday will help them build confidence.

Days 20-23: Newton’s 1st LAw & Constant Acceleration Model Building

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

This week was a little goofy. Students were off Friday for a staff development day and it was homecoming week, so classes were shortened on Monday and Thursday for festivities.

AP Physics 1: Free-Body Diagrams

This week was all about Newton’s 1st law. We started with the bowling ball lab to come up with a formulation of N1L, then worked on representing forces with free-body diagrams and system schema. Both sections had mistakes whiteboarding sessions that were overall really good. There was a debate about whether a projectile should experience air resistance that had a lot of good thinking. We ended up grabbing a softball out of the storeroom and capturing an image of it rolling in Motion Shot to see if it had a constant velocity. There was a much more intense debate about air resistance than I’ve seen before and I think the group presenting felt like it became a “gotcha” moment. I need to think about how I could have intervened differently in that discussion to shift the tone it took on.

Made in Motion Shot; photo with multiple, evenly spaced images of a softball as it rolls across a table

Physics: Constant Acceleration Model Building

Students used video analysis to produce graphs of the motion for an object on a ramp. I was ornery about making students attempt to follow a reference guide I made before I’d help with the technology, which made it a lot easier for me to spend time with students who needed help troubleshooting. The results were better than when I’ve used photogates, but still fairly messy. I think part of the problem is, regardless of the approach, students rush on key pieces and get sloppy data as a result. I need to think about how to slow my students down at key steps. It was also tough to get students to speak up during the board meeting, even with doing a gallery walk and jotting down some observations with their group beforehand. I’ve got more students than usual who underestimate how much they know and are wary of jumping in as a result. I have some work to do on increasing the social safety in my classroom and helping students recognize their contributions.

Students also did Kelly O’Shea’s CAPM card sort. Interestingly, even though this fell on the day of our homecoming pep fest, students were overall very engaged in the activity. I saw a lot of the same students I struggled to get to speak up during the board meeting asking great questions and sharing ideas during the card sort. I think the small group setting was a factor. I need to give some thought to what else made students comfortable speaking up so much in their small groups and how I can bring that to whole class discussions.

This group used chalk to turn their card sort in to a Venn diagram

Days 15-19: Interaction Stations & Constant Velocity Problems

September 27, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: AP Workbook

To wrap up constant acceleration calculations, we worked on some problems out of the College Board’s workbook. There was a lot of great discussion as students worked through the relatively complex problems. Students have been nervous about the early registration date for the exam this year, and working the problems seemed to help alleviate some of their fears.

Students also worked through an activity based on Brian Frank’s interaction stations to start building their model of a force. I had a sub that day, so afterward had students use a reading to define the major types of forces we’ll be using in class and connect them to the stations. We’ll be discussing the stations early next week and I’m thinking about how I want to approach the discussion. This week, I happened to read a chapter from Bryan Brown’s Science in the City where he talks about how teachers often miss how accurate students’ preconceptions are because students aren’t ready to express those ideas in scientific terms. I’m wondering how I might change the way I usually approach this discussion (and many others) to do a better job of recognizing and building on what students knowledge, regardless of the language they use to express it.

Physics: Constant Velocity Problems

Students worked problems, including the dueling buggies practical, using the constant velocity of a particle model. On their weekly reflection, a lot of students wrote about navigating different ideas within their groups about how to complete the lab practical. I was really excited to see that multiple approaches were suggested in most groups and that students were thoughtful about how to balance making everyone heard with moving forward as a group.

We also did some mistakes whiteboarding. In both my courses, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how quickly students are buying in to this activity. My Physics students have been pretty quiet during the whole-class discussions, but they are consistently referencing it in reflections as something they find helpful for learning and where they feel proud of their work in class.

Days 10-14: Constant Acceleration Representations & Constant Velocity Calculations

September 20, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Constant Acceleration Representations

We spent this week working on getting representations for constant acceleration down. I made quite a bit of use of Brian Frank’s magnetic vector manipulatives during class discussions of motion maps. I think it would be worthwhile to make a set for each lab group; I don’t have magnetic surfaces at my lab stations, but I think the laminated arrows would still be useful to students while they’re working.

I’ve been doing more work on collaboration so far this year, and I’m seeing it pay off with students seeking out input from a greater variety of people when they’re stuck and with ideas jumping between groups much more than in the past. I especially love when students start working problems with one group, then whiteboard with different people and begin by comparing approaches.

Physics: Constant Velocity Calculations

Students worked on applying the constant velocity of a particle model to calculations, including predicting where two buggies will collide. One challenge, which has come up the past few years, is a lot of students are having trouble connecting the calculations to the representations we’ve been using. I think there’s a couple of things going on. In a lot of classes, once students have taken an assessment, they no longer need to use those skills, so I think some students feel like they are done with constant velocity representations after last week’s quiz. I think the other hurdle is some students, especially those less confident in math, are looking for things they can memorize to bypass the sense-making involved in sketching the diagrams. I haven’t figured out good strategies to help students work through these hurdles aside from coaching individuals and small groups on doing the sense-making and sketching the diagrams when they are stuck. I also need to keep reminding myself that as the year goes on, more will get on board with continuing to use skills we’ve assessed and working through the sense-making steps.

Days 5-9: Board Meetings & Problems

September 13, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

This week’s big theme was using precise, specific language in physics.

Physics: Buggy Lab & Problems

Students did the buggy lab, then worked on some problems with constant velocity representations. We went over the problems using Kelly O’Shea’s mistakes whiteboarding. Both during the buggy board meeting and during the mistakes whiteboarding, students used a lot of phrasing like “the slope is increasing” to indicate a positive slope or even just saying “the buggy was decreasing”, rather than specifying what about the buggy is decreasing, which made for some good opportunities to pick apart that wording and try to find ways to make it clearer what they meant. A few students seemed like they were frustrated by these conversations, especially during mistakes whiteboarding when a group didn’t consider that one of their mistakes, which tells me I need to keep working on emphasizing growth.

AP Physics 1: Problems & Acceleration Model-Building

AP also had their first round of mistakes whiteboarding this week. While we had some similar conversations about language, I noticed fewer students who seemed frustrated by those conversations. I don’t think I approached getting nitpicky about wording differently than I did in Physics, so I’m not sure if the AP students were doing more hiding their frustration or if they are bringing something to the class that leaves them less bothered by me getting picky about language.

After the problems, we started a model-building lab for constant acceleration where we used photogates to produce a position vs. time graph for a cart on a ramp. This lab is fairly teacher-directed since its the first time students are using any LabQuest probes, and it takes a while to get through. I’ve thought about switching to motion detectors or video analysis, but with the limited computer access I usually have, I like that photogates produce data that students can linearize. My building added a lot more laptop carts this year, so I might try one of the other options when Physics gets to acceleration.

Days 1-4: Dowels & Buggies

September 6, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

School started on Tuesday! This week was all about setting the culture for my classes.

AP Physics 1: Buggy Lab

We dove right in and started the buggy lab on day 1 to start building the constant velocity model. Once again, I used Frank Noschese’s take that “Any lab worth doing is worth doing twice.” On day 1, I just told students to make a graph on a whiteboard that represented their buggy’s motion. There was a lot of variation and other messiness in the whitebaords, which lead the post-lab discussion naturally into how we could prepare whiteboards in a way that set us up for a better discussion. On Day 2 and 3, we repeated the lab, but with some agreements in place to make the whiteboards easier to discuss.

Last year, this approach felt like I was doing some “expose and shame”, but I really liked that it gave an authentic reason to agree on certain details as a class before data collection. This year, I tried to address that by starting the discussion on day 1 by explicitly addressing the fact that every group met the standard set in the directions I gave and talking about the benefits of the different representations we saw. When we switched to talking about changes to the lab, I emphasized that we would be approaching the second round with a focus on being able to communicate and compare results. I also kept the focus on what students needed from me, rather than what students needed to do differently, if we were going to focus on communicating and comparing. This framing of the discussion felt much better to me.

Physics: Dowels

Partly to avoid sharing equipment and partly to limit how much students have to retain from the first lab, we started by asking students to predict the mass of a large dowel by finding a relationship between the mass and volume of smaller dowels. Similar to AP, we did the lab twice. On the first day, I just asked students to predict the mass of the large dowel, and many ended up using measurements from a single smaller dowel. That lead to some nice discussion on how measuring more small dowels would reduce uncertainty. It also lead nicely into graphs as an easy way to look at the ratio between mass and volume of several dowels simultaneously. For the second round of the lab, students used the lab template I put together for the course.

Day 161: Final Project Presentations, Lab Final, & Nuke Whiteboarding

May 31, 2019May 31, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

This will probably be my last post of the year. Today was the last day for seniors, so my Physics and AP Physics 1 classes wrapped up today. My Chemistry Essentials class is mostly juniors, which means they will continue through the end of next week, but I’ll miss out since I’m going to the AP Physics reading.

This year, I’ve been doing a lot of work to try and build a strong whole-class culture and, compared to previous years, I had a lot more students talk about how they’ll missing being in their specific hour of physics, suggesting there was a strong sense of community. That was a really exciting element of my last day for the year.

AP Physics 1: Final Project Presentations

We finished up final project presentations. There was one group that designed and built a rig to reliably launch a hockey puck to measure the stopping distance along various surfaces in order to determine toe coefficient of friction. For the final, students were given a spring with a known spring constant and tasked with finding the mass of a mystery object.

phys lab final

Physics: Lab Final

Students did a lab practical for the second half of their final exam. There was lots of great conversation as students worked through the problem and it was a lot of fun for me to see students using so many of the skills we’ve been working on this year.

Chemistry Essentials: Nuke Whiteboarding

We did a quick refresher on nuclear decay using the whiteboards before taking the quiz on nuclear chemistry.

chem wb.jpg

Day 160: Final Project Presentations, Final Exam Part 1, & Mistakes Whiteboarding

May 30, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Final Project Presentations

We started presenting final projects. I have each group prepare a presentation, but am pretty lenient on length. I have a couple of students on the trap shooting team that presented today on their examination of the recoil on a shotgun. I hadn’t realized the shotgun barrel is above the center of mass, so there is an upward recoil in addition to the backward recoil.

Physics: Final Exam Part 1

Seniors are done tomorrow, but we’re on a standard schedule both today and tomorrow. To accommodate that, we split the physics final exam into two parts. Today, students took a pretty standard written final.

Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Whiteboarding

I showed students a table to organize their work on half life calculations, then we did some mistakes whiteboarding on yesterday’s problems. The table made the problems much easier for a lot of students, which was great.

chem mistake (1).jpg