Week 8 Reflection

Two big successes this week were the phenomena posters and the increased rate of students turning in their parts of the assessment in a timely manner.

With the phenomena posters this was our first time returning to the phenomena that started off our assessment, we will return to it again. We started this task before break, but the final products were not done until this week. I had the groups present the posters to the class, which provided an easy basic assessment of understanding. There were certainly a lot of groups who still need more support in understanding the phenomena, but also a lot of students showing good understanding and an improvement from when we first discussed the phenomena at the start of the assessment.

When we return to it at the end I think it will be more structured, something along the line of: Explain how gravity impacts its motion. Explain how friction impacts its motion. Explain how centripetal force impacts its motion. Explain how speed impacts its motion. That way they have more guidelines about how to explain the physics involved.









The second success this week was improved student turn in rate for each part of the assessment. With the first assessment (the research paper) it often felt like a chore trying to get the students to finish the earlier parts of the assessment. In this assessment it hasn't been as much of a problem. I think there are a few things that helped. First off, the structure of the assessment was more engaging to more students than the paper. Second, there was more familiarity with how the assessment process was structured. Third, I more heavily pushed turn in dates, for example the slides were due the day before break, but the students were told they had more time if needed. While I said things should be done by certain points in the previous assessment, this was not pushed as strongly. 

This week also began the start of the part of the assessment that worried me the most, the investigation into how balance, unbalanced forces and mass impacted motion. I wasn't sure my students would know how to approach this investigation. I should have had more confidence in them as there were a lot of great ideas. Some groups needed support in deciding an idea, others had ideas I knew wouldn't work, but there were a lot of unique investigations. Since teacher approval was required to test I helped give some guidance to the first two types of groups and let the rest move on. I know some of the data will be iffy, but I would much rather have the students develop their own investigation and get ok data, than follow a prescribed plan. 

Looking at balanced forces with two ballons.

Looking at mass by pushing different sized stuffed animals with the same force and tracking the distance they moved.

Investigating both mass and unbalanced forces by analyzing the movement of different massed cars moving down different ramps.

Going back to the balloon powered race car to look at how balanced forces impact motion.

One of a few different set ups where they were looking at the force applied by the balloon, in this case they were representing friction with the blocks at the end.

The start to a larger investigation looking at friction between different surfaces,

I will post after I grade this assignment with a list of some of the student investigation approaches that worked well.