Week 4 Reflection

Week 4 marked the end of the first task and the start of the next topic. As a physics fan I was thrilled to get into the core of the topic of motion.

As part of the end of the first task I gave all my students who had incomplete parts of the first task forms detailing what they still needed to turn in or get mastery on.

On my part the forms worked well as they do not take much time at all to complete, though I still wait to see how much of an impact they have on student scores. I will discuss this more in a later post reflecting on the first task, but I feel like I've struggled to really convey the idea that mastery is required. I think the students are not used to that idea and until it really becomes real to them (impacts their grade), they won't really get it.

With this new topic my classes are looking at a phenomena on the Wall of Death, basically a giant tub that you can ride around the walls of if you go fast enough. There is a lot to discuss about how physics plays a role in motion, even if you don't have much background in physics. The video worked well because it provides enough information that my students were generally able to figure out that speed, gravity, and friction played a role. Some who either knew of it, or were able to guess, figured out that the walls are not completely vertical as well. 

I played around with phenomena a bit last task, with the model of Jupiter and the asteroids, but plan on incorporating it more in this task. At the very least we will return to the Wall of Death in the middle of the unit and then work on diagramming forces at the end of the task as the students learn more.

From there the students worked on collecting data for the Speed Challenge. I've done the activity before, but structured it to be a bit more inquiry based this year. The students are in charge of making their own data tables, something I've tried to do for almost all activities this year. We then went over how we describe motion (using a Pear Deck) and I had the students think about how we might calculate speed, given what they know about about units for speed (such as miles per hour). And lastly, they were then given additional directions to calculate the speed values and apply that data to other situations. All in all, it worked well to introduce the students to motion and to give them a chance to go outside, which is a great break for them.

My biggest challenge with this week is trying to hold back how much I want to just give my students about motion versus helping them discover themselves. I love motion, I love lecturing about it, I could stand up all day solving problems on the board, and in a way that makes it almost harder to teach it. Not do I only want to explain too much, but it makes it harder for me remember not liking it or finding the topic hard. But, I am exciting to move onto the new task, our first engineering design challenge.