November 17: Test review

Today we tried something new, which I think worked out very well. Instead of covering problems one-by-one on the board, the students were split into six groups (roughly four per group). Each group had a set of small problems or tasks to work on. After about ten minutes, the tasks were rotated (via groups moving to different tables). Overall it seemed that the students were a lot more engaged. They were able to discuss the problems with each other more openly, and the teacher and I were free to assist groups as needed. I noticed a few students that were less motivated to participate, but it was more a matter of their attitude than the activity. The reaction from the students afterwards was very positive. As discussed with the teacher, some improvements could be made. The main problem was that some stations (those requiring math) took too much time to complete the task.

Drawings

It has come up a few times now, while doing boardwork, that the students get a little frustrated if drawings aren’t done precisely (no freehand!). This is entirely because they were taught this way by us when we covered usage of the ruler and protractor. While it is nice to see them start to appreciate some rigor and precision, I worry that we’ve made them distrust the freehanded drawing too much. Also, I don’t want to draft every drawing I make on the board with painstaking care (call me lazy, it’s true, but it’s also a time commitment). The big issue I see though, is that very often in real life you have to deal with freehand drawings. The students should be comfortable with a cartoon that doesn’t portray every scale and angle precisely, but is used to emphasize a point. I think it is important to clarify when it is acceptable to freehand and when extra time and care is needed to draft something with more fidelity.

October 17: More Gravity HW review

This block was spent covering the gravity homework. There was still some confusion about calculator usage and many calculating errors. I mostly paced the room, helping students one-on-one while the teacher reviewed. After spending so much time on calculator usage, I’m of the opinion that some sort of primer should be made as a handout. Perhaps a one page handout on how to use a calculator, covering the main functions that will be needed. Similarly to the discussion on October 14, give the function, common ways its presented on different calculators, a few examples of how to enter it, and maybe a few self tests. Another handout could be made for basic math concepts that will be used frequently in the class, such as order of operations, commutativity, manipulating a formula, understanding a formula, conversions (multiplying by 1), rounding, and scientific notation. A third might focus on units, although this is something that is and should still be covered in class. A few reasons why these handouts are a good idea:

• these would give students a good reference sheet
• more class time can be dedicated to physics
• helps students learn to self teach
• sets a baseline for expectations. its clear for the students what they need to know
• even if the handout is not enough, it introduces the concepts. when they do come for help, they’ll be a little further along than they would be otherwise.

The best use of class time is to say the things that everybody needs to hear. Situations where there is a large spread in student abilitiy and/or understanding might be more effectively handled by self teaching (reading assignments and HW) and after school assistance. The students who get it can dedicate their time to other things (and don’t get bored). Those who don’t get it will unfortunately will be burdened with more work, but they will also be able to take the time they need without worrying about their classmates.

October 14: Gravity HW review

Alexis observed class today. The goal was to spend 10-15 minutes going over the homework problem and then to start into the light reflection lab. What actually happened was, since the students were very confused about the homework, nearly all of the time was spent covering how to use a calculator and a little time was spent on units. Despite taking up so much time, I felt that I did a good job of organizing the discussion and getting the points across. Alexis’ review was largely favorable as well. A lot of confusion had to do with calculator usage, order of operations, and units. 

I explained the scientific notation button (x10n), negative button (+/-), and square button (x^2) by drawing a table. In the table I wrote down the desired function, the different ways it shows up for various calculators, how it should be entered, and an example to try. For units I just showed how they cancel out, mentioned that forces are measured in Newtons, and stressed that if you know what you are calculating, you can check yourself by making sure the units of your answer are correct. I also mentioned a simplified rule for rounding (truncating your answer to have the same number of digits as your inputs). 

At the end of class, two more problems were assigned. Essentially the same thing, but with different masses and distances. Two pages on light were assigned for reading.

October 13: Gravity - Center of Mass, Newton’s Law of Gravity

Students had assigned reading covering center of mass and Newton’s law of gravity. Discussion in class focused on these topics, finding the center of mass of various objects and starting into some math. I thought this went pretty well. No particular comments. For homework, students were asked to find the force of gravity on earth from the sun. The equation as well as all the constants were given.

October 7: Gravity - Ball Drop Activity

Today we showed the class a Bill Nye segment demonstrating why planets travel in circular orbits. The class seemed to enjoy the video, and it was a good segue into the ball drop activity. Overall I felt that the class was much more focused today. The students really got involved with the ball drop activity. There was a lot of discussion about which objects would fall first and why. Good opportunity to discuss human error and the importance of multiple trials.

Earlier in the class, a student asked me if we had really gone to the moon (in connection with the Bill Nye video), and so I was really hoping to show the Apollo video demonstrating a hammer and feather falling at the same time. Unfortunately, we ran short on time (Friday block is only 45 minutes) but I told the student to search for the video. Monday I’ll see if he took my suggestion (he did).

October 5: Retrograde Motion Activity

At the end of the last class, I showed the class retrograde motion using the software (Stellarium), but I did not explain how it happened. I was hoping a few students might think about it outside of class, and perhaps search online for an explanation (there was no indication that anybody actually did this). The idea for this class was to have the students act out the motion of the planets (in groups of four) so that they could directly see how the heliocentric model explains this phenomenon. I assumed it would be obvious to all the students that the geocentric model couldn’t easily explain retrograde motion, and for the most part I still feel this assumption was okay.

The main problem with the activity was that I simply did not spend enough time troubleshooting the writeup. I used way too much text to describe the activity and had no pictures. Some of the descriptions were vague as well. It seemed that most groups gave up trying to understand the activity fairly quickly, and called for my help instead of rereading. I point this out not to criticize them, but as something to keep in mind in the future when planning this sort of activity. Initially, I tried to help groups one at a time, hoping that some would get it on their own and that once I explained it to a group, more questions wouldn’t arise for a while. After getting through three groups it was clear that this strategy was a losing one. At the teacher's suggestion, I gathered the whole class in one spot, picked a few volunteers, and walked everybody through the activity together. This worked fairly well, but I think many got bored and/or weren’t paying attention. After asking for questions, all returned to their groups to try a second time. Most groups got it this time, with a little more encouragement. We went inside and spent the remaining time, about 15 minutes, discussing what happened. I wrote some discussion questions on the board for the students to copy down, but did not have a lot of time to take questions or clarify.

A few changes would make this activity go much smoother. Mostly, rewriting the assignment for clarity, and adding pictures. Better terms should be used for describing positioning and the directions to face. More emphasis on walking around the person acting as the sun, keeping the distance the same by using the rope. Smaller steps should be used so that data points are not so spread out. More thought should be put into the discussion questions, perhaps. Given more time the groups should act out the geocentric model as well so that they can compare the two systems. In the end the activity required twice as much time as planned for. Next time I will start with the demonstration!

October 3: Models of the Solar System

This was a semi-lecture that I had prepared to get students thinking about how scientists use models and how observations are used to validate or revise those models. The models used were the heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system, as this ties in well with the moon phases just learned and gravity which is next on the agenda. The outline of the talk is in a separate document. I think the students got a lot from the discussion. I was asked a lot of good questions from a few of the students. A few ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ here and there indicated that they were paying some attention. Still, it was difficult to pull in the students who were reluctant to participate. There’s a lot of resistance from some to be active in discussions.

For the most part I think the pacing was pretty good, but towards the end I had to rush a little. In all I think there was about 40-45 minutes available when they got back from the break. It probably would’ve fit better in an hour, allowing more time to pull answers from the students and let them consider the more challenging points of discussion. The software worked very well, and I think the students appreciated it. For next time I think it would be good to try to fit in some more images, perhaps from the Hubble telescope, because that really gets the students excited. It would also be useful to have a more concrete way to assess how well the students absorb and understand the material.

October 3: Phases of the Moon

Continued some work on moon phases, using an activity with tennis balls and some lamps placed in the center of the room. Students seemed to have a better grasp of what was going on this time, and were able to demonstrate the moon phases when asked. They also seemed to enjoy trying the activity. Explained some more details, such as that the same side of the moon always faces the Earth.

September 21: Ruler review

The teacher had a morning meeting so I worked solo with the class for the first 30 minutes or so. No issues getting started really. The first task was to review the homework (measuring lines) and have everybody grade themselves.

I learned pretty quickly that it isn’t a good idea to plan too casually, even for things that seem trivial to do (perhaps this is slightly less true for more experienced teachers). It’s easy to picture in your mind the way something will be done without seeing the pitfalls and logistical hurdles. I had it in my mind that I could just draw the ruler up on the board and call on students to come up and show their answers. It quickly became obvious that this method would be very time consuming and was overkill for this assignment. I switched to just calling on students for their answer and seeing if there was agreement. Even this felt tedious and slow, and I could tell that everyone was getting impatient. It was a little difficult to get people to volunteer answers, and when they did, they spoke very softly.

September 19: Using a Ruler

Students were given a quiz with two questions: read from an English ruler and from a metric ruler. Before the quiz most students claimed to know how to use a ruler, but many spent quite a while on the quiz and only three students got both questions correct. There was a roughly even split between those who missed both questions and those who missed only the English ruler. Nobody read the English ruler correctly and missed the metric ruler. 

The quiz was quickly graded (1pt for English ruler, 2pt for metric ruler). Metric was weighted more because students were expected to know that system better than English. The uneven weighting also makes it very easy to scan the grades and know exactly which questions the students missed based on grade (ie, anyone who scored 2pt read the English ruler incorrectly).

For the most part I thought the explanations of the systems were clear. Good explanation of how the two systems differ, how to read English and why it is that way, how to read metric. Covered some better methods to read off rulers faster, which I think will be useful once the students gain mastery. One method was to subtract from the nearest whole (ie, 15/16 = 1 - 1/16). The other was to use mixed groupings. 15/16 = 1/4 + 1/16 = 4/16 + 1/16. It might be worth mentioning (perhaps later, after students have some familiarity) what to do when the thing being measured doesn’t fall neatly on a tick mark. Depending on the task (and precision needed) I either split the difference (ie, something between 15/16 and ⅜ would be ~11/32), round (just call it ⅜), or make a note to indicate its a little larger (15/16+). Probably only the first solution would be appropriate to talk about since it’s the most formal.

One thing that struck me was that the pacing seemed very slow, and yet there were students who still seemed to struggle. It’s difficult to put yourself in the mindset of somebody with little experience on the topic. Perhaps the pacing is slow after all, but this also highlights the difficulty of teaching something that one is extremely familiar with. It seems so fundamental and obvious that it becomes a struggle to slow down and let others absorb the concepts.

September 14: Balloon vehicles

Most of the 9th grade class was on a trip to Thompson Island. The remaining students (~26 in number) were combined for this activity. I worked with another intern to organize an activity where students were given some materials and tasked to build a balloon powered vehicle that travelled as far as possible down a length of string. Planning went smoothly but I was concerned about time constraints and some specifics about the introductory discussion. The final plans are “balloon mobiles.doc” and “balloon vehicles.doc” (expanded to include more details re: timing, materials, instructor roles).

Overall the activity went well. I felt the introductory talk could have been a little more focused and clear about the task. Also, the original string tracks were not long enough (just over 4 m), and one or two groups got to the end on the first or second try. We had to make ad hoc secondary goals for these groups, which amounted to adding frivolous and ill defined constraints (“You have to build a platform for the vehicle”). Eventually a longer track was built so that the groups could keep to the original goal. A few groups got frustrated with repeated failures. One group nearly did not finish building at all, and finally made one test run as others were finishing cleanup. In the future more attention should probably be paid to these groups to push them in the right direction. Encourage groups to try often. It's better to try and fail many times than to fail just once at the end (when there's no time left to revise).

I led the final discussion with the class about what problems they ran into, what worked or failed, etc. The discussion was okay but most students were reluctant to participate. Ideally more time would be allotted to allow them to warm up to talking. Also, although I had in mind what I wanted to discuss, more time should have been spent beforehand working out the order of topics. As it was, I think I perhaps jumped around a little too much and relied too heavily on improvising a discussion, which might have hindered feedback from the students. Some good points were made in discussion and a few groups had very good designs, but it is difficult to assess how much the students got out of the assignment.

September 9: Introductions

First day of actual class for the students. Attitudes and behavior was very good. Most time was spent with introductions, paperwork (paper nametag, popsicle stick nametags, information sheet, general expectations, book covers). Focus was on getting to know students, acclimating them to the classroom quickly (protocols such as where things get turned in, going to bathroom, etc), setting up a safe environment. Students were asked what they thought physics was about. After some prodding (and a few guesses landing closer to chemistry or psychology), students opened up and started throwing out physics terms. Newton’s laws, energy, force, etc.

September 8: General assembly

Environmental lawyer Jan Schlichtmann visited the school to speak. Discussed environmental issues, the Earth as our inheritance (and our responsibility to take care of it), and a little bit about the novel and movie (A Civil Action) telling his story. Student reception was good, despite direction of the talk not always being clear.

Activity led by the science team went very smoothly and seemed to get the students thinking about e-waste (specifically cellular phones) and what can be done to help. Raised some awareness about the impact of our electronic trash. There was not a strong link between this activity and the speaker, other than that both were generally about environmental pollution.

All faculty, staff, and interns introduced themselves to the student body. I thought this was a great idea and worked very well. Lots of excitement from the student body. Seemed like a great unifying activity, highlighting school pride and familial attitude.

Science team debriefed and discussed what they thought were good and bad points of the assembly on September 9 during afternoon meeting.