The assignment had these students working on slides about Newton's laws and about how each law related to the motion of the balloon powered race car (student slides and teacher slides). The first part (describing the laws) isn't really critical to the task itself, but I felt like it supported the students in completing the second part (discussing how they related). And for the students who will need extra help it gives me something to start with when supporting them.
We worked on a law each day, which went well. I am used to spending a lot longer with direct instruction and student activities related to each law, so this shorter structure was a challenge for me. There is the constant worry that of how much I should be putting on the students in terms of understanding and how much I need to present to them. But. I look at this year as very much a work in progress.
This week I begin each day with a demo or two related to the law. The first day we looked at a couple related to inertial. One is below, the other was the pulling out the table cloth from under a place setting trick.
(Embedding videos is having some issues right now, so I've added links below.)
The second day I didn't do a specific demo, other than discuss how it is easy to start pushing something that weigh less (like a pencil case) rather than something that weights more (like the lab table).
And the third day we looked equal an opposite forces with two rolling chairs and the students pushing off of each other and then just one student pushing. In both cases they both moved back.
Working on just one law each day gave the students a good amount of time to get the slides done in class and ask for support as needed. Since we have basically moved away from intentional homework the work time has become something the students expect and most use it well.
On Thursday we self checked the slides. Since it is hard for me to really work and check on each student each day, this gives them a chance to make sure they have the key parts before turning it in.
And then we moved onto a couple more complicated demos. I feel like it is important to bring some of these more surprising and complicated demos into middle school science. Although not all students understand it 100%, it is good for them to be exposed to them. One isn't shown below, but it is where you have a platform suspended by strings with a pyramid of cups of water on it (it works 100% like swinging around a bucket of water, but looks way cooler).
The first is the fan cart, which is fairly straight forward.
And the second is the bicycle gyroscope. This one is much more complicated, but I try to really present the idea of precision with just the idea of the first law and objects (or points on the object, wanting to keep moving how they were moving).
With this assessment I am also working on incorporating phenomena into this assessment. We looked at the wall of death at the start and I felt like a midway through check in would be good. With the short day the groups didn't all finish, so we will continue after break, but they began work on a group advertisement for the wall and the physics behind it. There were a lot of good ideas, but it was clear that a lot of groups either didn't get all the concepts at work (not surprising because it is a little complicated). This time I let them research online, which can be good or bad because you end up with some groups trying to explain a concept they don't yet understand rather than focusing on explaining what they do understand. We will return to their advertisements and a description of the physics behind it at the end of the unit as well.
Although the final product can be more clunky than something done independently on the iPad, I feel like the collaboration aspect of making a poster with your group using pen and paper makes the activity more effective.
This week I begin each day with a demo or two related to the law. The first day we looked at a couple related to inertial. One is below, the other was the pulling out the table cloth from under a place setting trick.
(Embedding videos is having some issues right now, so I've added links below.)
The second day I didn't do a specific demo, other than discuss how it is easy to start pushing something that weigh less (like a pencil case) rather than something that weights more (like the lab table).
And the third day we looked equal an opposite forces with two rolling chairs and the students pushing off of each other and then just one student pushing. In both cases they both moved back.
Working on just one law each day gave the students a good amount of time to get the slides done in class and ask for support as needed. Since we have basically moved away from intentional homework the work time has become something the students expect and most use it well.
On Thursday we self checked the slides. Since it is hard for me to really work and check on each student each day, this gives them a chance to make sure they have the key parts before turning it in.
And then we moved onto a couple more complicated demos. I feel like it is important to bring some of these more surprising and complicated demos into middle school science. Although not all students understand it 100%, it is good for them to be exposed to them. One isn't shown below, but it is where you have a platform suspended by strings with a pyramid of cups of water on it (it works 100% like swinging around a bucket of water, but looks way cooler).
The first is the fan cart, which is fairly straight forward.
And the second is the bicycle gyroscope. This one is much more complicated, but I try to really present the idea of precision with just the idea of the first law and objects (or points on the object, wanting to keep moving how they were moving).
In each case I tried to model how they might represent the forces acting on the object because that is a critical thing for them to become accustom to this unit.
With this assessment I am also working on incorporating phenomena into this assessment. We looked at the wall of death at the start and I felt like a midway through check in would be good. With the short day the groups didn't all finish, so we will continue after break, but they began work on a group advertisement for the wall and the physics behind it. There were a lot of good ideas, but it was clear that a lot of groups either didn't get all the concepts at work (not surprising because it is a little complicated). This time I let them research online, which can be good or bad because you end up with some groups trying to explain a concept they don't yet understand rather than focusing on explaining what they do understand. We will return to their advertisements and a description of the physics behind it at the end of the unit as well.
Although the final product can be more clunky than something done independently on the iPad, I feel like the collaboration aspect of making a poster with your group using pen and paper makes the activity more effective.
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