Why I need a giant turntable. (Part 2)

This is a continuation of a previous post. ( O.k. I realize it is one post down, but hey they give me the ability... why not use it?)

Part 2 of my week of awesomeness.

I got to spend the day Saturday with my incredibly awesome modeling group from this summer. We got together, saw some wicked awesome discrepant event demos, ate sandwiches with really awesome names. (I was conflicted between the Apollo Creed Steak and Cheese Sandwich or the Eric Estrata Enchilada. I decided that the Apollo Creed would make my stomach feel less rocky. He he get it because Apollo ... and rocky... oh nevermind.) But I digress. I feel so blessed and lucky to have taken this workshop with this amazing group of educators. If we could bottle and share the enthusiasm and pedagogical energy of this group with all teachers, today's crisis in American education would not exist. It was great to see most of us back together. We shared incidents that happened in our classes. We asked advice about some of our issues. We did really cool labs and one that was really cold (outside you know.). That is my last pun in this post. I promise. One of the discrepant events was a bouncy ball that you toss under a table. It hits the floor, then the underside of the table and then you have a choice. Will it come back to you? Will it just bounce up and down under the table until energy dissipates? Will it bounce off the table and continue moving forward? It turns out it bounces back at you. But a tennis ball doesn't. It bounces up and down until it stops. A golf ball doesn't do either! It continues through on its path in the same direction! Very interesting. We discussed it for a while trying just about every ball we could find in the lab trying to prove/disprove our theories. At that point my pal Steve came up with an idea to turn this into an inquiry lab that could be written up for publication. Interested in helping? Check out his blog.

Anyhoo,
Item 3 of the week of totally awesome?
Being new to this whole modeling thing I have had difficulty with taking what I would deem an appropriate amount of grades for the quarter. I feel that most of the work the kids are doing is new stuff and I hate to mark them down for not knowing things that they have never learned before. Some grades were a bit lower than I feel that they should be. So I had the kids do a self-evaluation of their progress in my class. I then sat down with them one on one to discuss their progress. It was great. I have learned so much about them this year. I feel I know them so much better than I have known any class before. It is a really neat experience for me. And it makes me even happier that I decide to go hang with these strangers for 3 weeks last summer!

Why I need a giant turntable.

My poor blog has been left alone too long. I apologize to my regular readers (all 2 of you!) but it has been the end of the first marking period and grades are due. My blog had to wait awhile. But I am back now and I have a lot to post about.

1. It was a great week for me professionally and it could not have come at a better time. My classroom has become a quagmire of unproductive modeling... but that is another point for later. I attended the DMAPT meeting on Wed at the Detroit Science Center. We had the facility to ourselves. I think the phrase 'kid in a candy store' needs to be replaced by 'physics teachers in a science center'. It was a blast. My favorite display down there is this giant turntable. It rotates and they provide various size disks to go on them. If you cradle them gently between your fingers and hold them upright against the turntable they will begin to spin and they will remain upright rolling along the turntable. We of course were experimenting trying to figure everything out about them. We noticed that if the disk leaned inwards it would move towards the center of the table. An outward lean would cause it to move outwards. If you turn it slightly to the motion the table is spinning it begins a wobbly oscillating path around the turntable that is fun to watch until the disk falls over. Great fun! But it got even better when one of the teachers pulled out a 1.5-2 inch diameter steel bearing. Now you might ask why he had that on him, and I would remind you that it was a bunch of physics teachers so really that should just be expected. Then you might add, "next you'll tell me that someone else had 216 bucky ball magnets in their pocket." And you'd be right again.
Anyhoo back to the ball. I had thought the disks were the pinnacle of coolness until I say the ball. At first we tried to repeat what we did with the disks with some success. It made a spine-tingling sound and traced small circles on the table. That was neat, but the best part came when we began rolling it across the turntable. When it went with the rotation it bowed outwards and came back and kept going. But the true magic happened when we rolled it 'against the grain.' The turntable was spinning counter-clockwise and as I rolled it onto the left part of the turntable the ball quickly moved in the direction of rotation and made a big arc around the right side of center. When it got to the other side and rolled back onto the stationary table it immediately returned to its original speed and direction of travel! It was so amazing to watch. Of course hypotheses abounded. We tried to capture it on video but the lighting was fairly dim. If it gets posted I will link it.

Okay. I'm tired now. The rest of this post will have to wait until tomorrow. Not quite as triumphant a return as I hoped I guess.

Unit II is in the books.

I tested on Unit 2 today. I should be grading but the pull of the internet is so alluring. I thought I should post a reflection on how the unit went. So here goes..

My success as a modeler: C-/D+

Why not higher?: I think I missed the point a lot. What I thought was obvious from the discussions I have learned was not. I need to be better with having a wrap-up after discussions. I need to be better about getting ALL kids involved in the discussions. I need to develop ways to get those kids who are off in la-la land back into what is going on. I need to figure out how to put a gag over my mouth and just let things happen. I need to be more precise with my language. I still spout out speed and velocity willy nilly. To me they are the same thing because I understand the difference. My students do not and it has led to confusion. I hope they all did well on the test, but of course I fear the worst.

Why not lower then?: I think my kids learned WAY more than they did from how I taught the topic last year. That being said, constant motion was about 2 days last year instead of 3 weeks like this year. But still I love that my students are actually engaged in intelligent conversation about physics.

Best moments (or why I'm never going back to the old way)?: When I had a sub for PSAT testing and my students continued with our whiteboard discussion without me and actually learned something. (My sub was blown away!) The fact that my students are actually willing to discuss physics even when I haven't specifically asked them to. (I have even caught them in lunch continuing a discussion from the morning class.) One student (who is retaking the class because he failed last year) told me that, "this way is WAY BETTER than last year. It makes so much more sense."

Reflections: I know I'm getting better as time goes on. I know that this is the right thing for the kids. I am worried that whiteboarding will get old for them. Too much of anything can become bad. So I need to find other ways to assess the work without using the whiteboards all the time. Also I need to resolve the fact that the rest of my department gives mostly multiple choice tests. We are meeting to create a district-wide test used by all physics classes. I am hoping my kids will do great on it but I am nervous since the style tests I'm giving do not match that style of question.

Despite all of this I truly am glad I went to that workshop. It was one of the best decisions I have made during my teaching profession.

Whiteboarding by itself.

An interesting thing happened in my class this week. I had to proctor the PSAT for the sophomores in my school. This left two of my Physics classes without my presence. I had planned a 10 minute quiz and whiteboarding for that day before being notified of the testing. I had considered changing the plan when I realized my students were still very reliant on me in the discussions. So I decided to have them go ahead with the original plan in my absence. It worked for both hours. The students whiteboarded the entire worksheet. They discussed motion maps and came to consensus on many different aspects of it. The next day I debriefed them on their decisions. The majority of them were spot on. What a proud moment I had for them.

New graphing worksheets?

I think the modeling course resources need to be updated with new graphs that may speak more to the kids sensibilities. Here are some I found on my new favorite website.


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs


see more Funny Graphs

First Quiz.

So I gave the first quiz of my modeling career last week. The results were not pretty. The students weren't necessarily 'wrong,' they just weren't detailed enough in their responses. Most of the students scored 50% or less because of this. I spent a long time grading and asking questions that would focus them more and encourage more detail on their responses. I then had them do quiz corrections. I did not go over the quizzes in class at all. They had to tell me the "correct" answer and also tell me how their thinking had changed from their first answer to the corrected one. I then told them I would give them a make-up quiz on Friday. Both quizzes would still count, but those who did quiz corrections would get a fantastic bonus. Whatever grade they got on Friday's quiz would be the grade for both quizzes. I gave them a completely new quiz on the same topics. In the first class I graded, over 90% of my students scored an A on the quiz. It is amazing the detail and thought that was included on this quiz. Easiest quiz I have EVER graded. Oh modeling why didn't I find you years ago.

Why today was a great day.

My 5th hour had a breakthrough today in whiteboarding. My students are finally starting to get it. They had about a 5 minute discussion without asking me anything. By the end they had developed consensus on three big issues without me prompting much at all. It wasn't much but it was enough to make me pursue it further. It's kinda the same reason I still play golf. Everytime I swear I'm going to give up the game forever I hit that one perfect shot. I'm hoping I have more great whiteboarding moments than good golf shots. It just reinforces my opinion that taking a simple 3 week workshop may turn into one of the most pivotal important moments of my teaching career.