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.
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.
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.
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.
AP Physics 1: Circuits Mistakes Whiteboarding
I forgot to take a picture, but students did some mistakes whiteboarding with yesterday’s problems. We moved quickly enough through circuits that I think I’ll need to make sure I have some circuit materials worked into our review, but students are feeling pretty good about this topic.
Physics: Spring Lab Practical
Students finished up a lab practical finding an unknown mass using both Hooke’s Law and the period on a spring. Students who didn’t include units in their work tended to get two different answers; most groups got a spring constant in N/cm and without units in the calculations, they tended to miss the need to convert. It was a good lesson in the value of units. It also occurred to me I should incorporate this lab into my AP review since students are finding both gravitational mass and inertial mass.
Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Mistakes
We did mistakes whiteboarding with yesterday’s balancing problems. Right now, students mostly seem to be understanding what to do, but need to build up some confidence. I’m really pleased with how well the Mathlink cubes have been working as a manipulative; they are even helping students quite a bit with going between formulas and particle diagrams.
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.
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.
AP Physics 1: Kirchhoff’s Laws
Students used PhET’s circuit construction kit to look for patterns in series and parallel circuits. Students were pretty successful at noticing the things I wanted them to notice and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s discussion of the results.
Physics: Problems
Students worked on some problems using the spring period equation. We also spent some time on whole-class discussion about the motion graphs for an object on a spring, and tested a lot of ideas using a motion encoder cart hooked to a force sensor with a spring.
Chemistry Essentials: Balancing Reactions
Students used PhET’s balancing chemical equations simulation to start figuring out what it means for a reaction to be balanced. Students were pretty successful at working out the significance of each of the tools the PhET activity provided, along with what it means to be balanced. Even though I didn’t assign the game, a few students decided to play and ended the hour with a lot of confidence and enthusiasm for balancing problems.
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.
AP Physics 1: Ohm’s Law Board Meeting
We had a board meeting for yesterday’s results. One of the things I was really happy about is not all groups used the same approach to dealing with three variables. Some did one experiment graphing current and voltage, followed by a second experiment graphing current and resistance. Others just graphed current and voltage, but did the same experiment with two different resistances.
Physics: Spring Period Board Meeting
We whiteboarded the results from this week’s lab on spring period. When writing the equation, a lot of students had trouble with when to use a unit and when to use a variable, but that’s been tough throughout this year. I think a lot of students are struggling to distinguish what those two things communicate, so I need to give some thought to how to teach that difference.
Chemistry Essentials: Connecting Representations and Observations
One of the things I think has been missing in the second half of this course is students draw very few connections between what they actually see in the lab and the representations they use for chemical reactions, so my co-teacher and I decided to work on that this year. Today, we did a lab where students did several simple chemical reactions, then identified observations that support specific elements of the reaction equation. For example, when students reacted copper (II) chloride with aluminum, they were able to recognize the reddish powder that replaced the aluminum was the copper predicted by the reaction equation.
Simultaneously Learning & Teaching
Ideas for Physics Teachers
explorations and inspirations... in how we learn science
Brian reflects on his physics teaching
(sometimes) daily updates about physics classes, mistakes, and sensemaking
Recording reflections about teaching and learning
Physics, Modeling Instruction, Educational Technology, and other stuff I find interesting
Reflections on the dynamics of teaching
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett
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