The students in my grade 11 Physics class are just great. They are all so different - one is a perfectionist who is more concerned with grades than learning, while another couldn't care less about grades, but told me he is in the course to learn how to accurately predict where his bullet will land for the upcoming hunting season. One student has an amazing creative innovative mind but struggles with the math to move from ideas to real solutions, while another is great at the math but has trouble understanding concepts. One answers all my questions, even if he knows his answers are wildly wrong, while another barely opens her mouth even when she's quite sure of her answer. For a class of only 6 students, there couldn't be a broader spectrum of students. And they are so much fun to teach.
Today was the second day of our forces unit, so we spent the class learning about free-body diagrams. We acted out the freebody diagram of a "system" (one student) experiencing an applied force from the "environment" (various combinations of students pulling and pushing on the poor "system"). It was fun for the kinesthetic learners in the group to move around and be the free-body diagram, but the more shy students were a little nervous about the activity. It's a challenge to think of ways to engage such a small class with so many different learning styles.
After acting out each free-body diagram, we drew the corresponding free-body diagrams and calculated the net force in a chart using the overhead projector. I had no idea drawing on overheads was so difficult! I thought it would be far easier than using the blackboard, but not at all. I definitely need some more practice with that!
Next, we did our first POE (Predict, Observe, Explain) of the Forces unit! It was a fun one, and I think the students were interested and engaged. I showed the students how I could hang two spring scales side-by-side and suspended a mass from both spring scales. Then I showed them how I could hang one spring scale above the other, with the mass hanging from the lower spring scale. The students had to decide how the force shown on the spring scales would differ between the two situations. I was so impressed! Even with only one day of studying forces under their belt, several of the students could accurately predict that the side-by-side springs should read half the force of the springs hung in series, and give me a clear explanation (without all the correct terms, but the right concepts) for why. Yet other students questioned them, and didn't quite believe it until they saw it, which was a great eye opener for them. I'll definitely use that POE again.
We ended the class with some practice free-body diagrams of the students in the class riding horses or parachuting, and preparation for a formative lab tomorrow. I'm quite excited for the lab - we'll be investigating the relationship between force, mass and acceleration by pulling students on a cart through the cafeteria. It looks like it'll be a lot of fun, and hopefully by the end of the day we will have discovered F = ma!
The best part of the day today, however, was actually just the very start of class. Yesterday, I had the students share their hobbies with me (so that I can make them the main characters in the problems I assign), tell me a few aspects of forces they want to especially study (this seems to be an astrophysics group!), and share with me what they believe makes a great Physics teacher. The responses for what makes a great teacher were varied and all very helpful, but the last one made me smile - one student simply wrote "insanity". So when I was chatting with the students at the start of class about how I'll be working to live up to these expectations, I strolled over to the chalk board, picked up a conveniently place piece of chalk and popped it in my mouth. It was of course edible chalk, but it was a really fun moment to laugh with the students before we dove into free-body diagrams today.
So all in all, I was happy with how today's class went. The students seemed to be interested in the material, and they're beginning to grasp the concepts. I need to work on my note writing skills for sure, and I ran out of time to finish everything I hoped to finish, but that's what learning is for.
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