Monthly Archives: March 2013

Thursday Week 9

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10 B Science: We made quite a bit of progress on the independent practical investigation into car crashes and safety. Most of the class finished their science descriptions of the dummies motion in unprotected crashes using video physics on the iPads to find changes in displacement and velocity for the dummy. Pretty much all the groups started to develop and in some cases test, ideas for keeping the dummy safer in the collision. At this stage this mostly consists of seat belts but they do need to make at least two changes eventually. I’m trying to stay “hands off” as much as possible to allow the students to show case their own problem solving and independence – I find this difficult.

10 F Science: The one group that started the practical part of their crash investigation continued and started to create a description – they’ll need help with this for the most part. The other groups didn’t progress. Some students sat their test very late and surprisingly a lot of the answers resembled those I’d provided as feedback to people who’d already taken the test. The problem here is there is a clash between the wildly irregular attendance of a number of this class and the need to provide feedback on tasks as quickly as possible. I think the feedback wins as that’s the learning driver and I just have to take late test results with a pinch of salt. Unfortunately we haven’t got passed the student’s need to be seen to be passing rather than being seen to be learning – historically that’s the fault of us adults around them for focusing on the wrong thing. I used a rubric only assessment on this test but it was pretty crude (I was looking at how successful they were at groups of questions) so this can be improved to help. Also in the past I’ve usually created more than one version of the test (through reorgainising multiple choice answers, changing values etc). Some get quite indignant when they realise their test is different from their neighbours.

Stage 2 Physics Tute: I gave out the Solar Sail information; did a quick check on the electric field ideas, comparing our tute last week with their lesson; worked through the questions on the practice test – at the moment the group like to be taken through problem solving step by step; discussing next weeks practical and preparing for their homework tasks.

Wednesday Week 9

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Stage 1 Physics: Our tutorial session. Small demonstration of interference to start with, 2 speakers and a signal generator – the students found the quite and loud spots. We looked at a series of questions around waves Stage 1 Physics Week 9 Tutorial. I also gave the class some thinking about the Doppler effect, which I didn’t name, with a video of an approaching and then leaving car. Homework – the simulations I’ve place on edmodo about waves.

10 F Science: This is an independent task. I’ve set some criteria e.g. no equipment until the group has a written plan about how to use it. This is the time for the control tests for the trolley cars and their dummies. They are to get a clear idea in  quantitative and qualitative form about what happens in the collision. One group out of the class made good progress and even videoed some of the collisions on the I-pads. This task goes through next week too, the groups are expected to make changes that reduce the impact of the collision on the dummy. Car Crashes

8 Science: Introduced the geology topic under the Rocks to Riches guise. So we watched some very short videos about geologists – one hunting rubies, one petrol and others. Next the students stuck all the sheets for this task Becoming a Geologist (which will run into next term) into their books. Then down to the library to finish the energy sources task. Still lots of problems getting the computers to log in for the students so the parts of the task I expected to be using ICT skills eventually had to be done in books 🙁

Some students started the Becoming a Geologist task by examining the rock samples we’d taken with us through stereomicroscopes and hand lenses.

Tuesday Week 9

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I don’t usually start with a home group blog but 8F (my home group and Science class) ran the Year 8 assembly today. One of the brave members of the class got up to talk, briefly about the roller coasters we made to talk about potential and kinetic energy while I showed a couple of the videos (which I can’t post because the students feature in them – the videos are very brief). It went down well.

Stage 1 Physics: This was a continuation of the wave concepts lesson from last Tuesday. I used a lot of PhET simulations this time to reexamine the ideas of refraction and then look at interference and the relationship between wavelengths and diffraction. I had to show diffraction differently (hearing sound around corners, waves in a harbour) because I couldn’t find a good interactive activity that I didn’t have to pay for. We finished off doing a superposition exercise to look at interference. I set up one that produced a beat frequency (interference between two not dissimilar frequency waves. I’ll get them to do at least one more with one out of phase with the other so that they cancel completely. I also returned the three assessment pieces. (After all the effort of getting the students to keep the paper single sided so I could scan it and just keep a digital version of their work I went and printed the test double sided – Major doh! moment). Most of the class have submitted everything and been very successful so far.

10 B Science: We started out with me asking questions – how were their crash trolleys different from a car? How could they create repeatable collisions? How could they record (qualitatively and quantitatively) the effect of the collisions on the dummy? These are quite difficult questions and it took a while but I didn’t move on until every group had provided feedback and we could cumulatively improve on their suggestions. Then they got their dummies on the trollies and Ipads (one group went straight to analysing their results on video physics) and other recording and accelerating tools. The whole focus of the rest of the lesson was to capture what happened to the dummy if we did nothing to change the trolley and finished off with writing a science description based on our observations – one with values as well as qualitative terms, we still have to finish these. Home work is a quiz on edmodo – I still have to get some of the class on, after nearly a whole term!

Monday Week 9

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Stage 2 Chemistry Tutorial: Today the group were preparing for their assessed quantitative analysis practical – finding the ethanoic acid content of white wine. I’m pretty familiar with this prac as it’s one I wrote for the course so I went through the parts where they should show initiative and their ability to work with others. We also did some practicing of techniques and reviewed the reason why. The students started to write up their procedures and prepared table to record their data.

Year 10 B Science: Introduction to the big investigation and design aspect of the motion unit where students build. Today was about thinking about how to keep constants and what variables there will be in the investigation, the purpose of which is to start off with a vehicle that is unsafe in collisions and using the ideas they’ve learned so far to turn it into a vehicle that’s safe in a collision. So far we’ve got our crash test dummies into seats on the trolleys so that they stay in place but don’t stop the dummy moving with the collision – no seat belts or gluing the dummy into place. Car Crashes

 

10 F Science: We looked at stopping distance without too much in the way of incidents and with some interest from the class (I need to check next time that my point about energy was taken in). This took quite a long time while I wrote brief summaries along the way and then checked that everyone was writing them. Followed by the same introduction I’d previously given to the 10B group. We got two made up and ready to go for next lesson. Spent lots of time dealing with “he’s got my phone” and having to move students so that they didn’t draw on each other.

Friday Week 8

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Year 8 Science: Caught up with the students who didn’t quite pass the test, we examined some of the questions and went through the ideas. Those students now have a homework task to write three questions (three different styles) and prepare answers for them, they can use the test to model their questions but can’t copy. Having those well thought out and correct will give them a pass for the test. Meanwhile the rest of the class were continuing on their assignment about energy production – problems with the computers (sigh) means I’ve had to extend the deadline into next week where it will overlap into our Geology but that can’t be helped. The experience does mean that I’ve now booked a trolley of I-pads for our Geology work which is going to be part lab based and part library based with a small group presentation at the end that covers the learning objectives. Homework – to begin the rock collection. Just three for now but labeled and referenced (they won’t know what the rock is yet – that’s going to be part of the learning which we’ll add to their referencing).

Year 10 F Science: Test day. The class tried hard and were mostly quite positive about doing it. We ran the test (same one as for 10 B) open book and I did allow myself to drop hints from time to time as I am modifying the assessment for this class. After marking they pretty much all passed (I used a rubric) so I’ll congratulate them on Monday when we start off into the making safer cars investigation. Test on motion – differentiated

Stage 1 Physics: Another test – I don’t plan these things as well as I should. All but one passed I set the test for an hour which seemed like a fair time and although they were slightly rushed at the end I think it’s best that they realise that time in tests is precious. Some of the students mixed up the axis on their graphs so that’s something I have to address next lesson. There were some really astute answers for the questions where I was allowing them to solve problems or suggest reasons why certain methods are used. The test is the second part of a two part Skills and Applications task – the first part was an assignment a lot of which was done in class time. I do this because I often find the first stage 1 test is a bit of a shock to the students (It’s not unusual for a lot to fail so this time around they did a good job). Skills and Apps task 1 prt B solutions Skills and apps 1 part B Motion Timed Test

Thursday Week 8

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10 B Science: Our big theory test today. Test on motionThe idea behind this test is that it has enough parts at C grade for students of different abilities to pass. I may have overestimated this aspect. Not that this class didn’t do well, they did, just that I think I didn’t put in enough questions which are at the basic level. Anyhow it worked out fine for this class. We then completed our report on the bicycle stopping distance investigation by writing a conclusion based on the graphs (mostly describing the graph as non-linear and that braking distance increased at a more rapid rate than speed). Then I took the class through some of the pages of this PDF STOPdis on the whiteboard concentrating on reaction time (we measured ours) and stopping distance. Then a bit of driver safety – the 3 second rule. Next we start putting our crash test dummies through their paces and seeing if we can design a safer vehicle.

10 F Science: Revision. I took the class through some of the concepts and types of questions that will be in the test. A few volunteered answers and hopefully gained a bit of confidence through the process. None were willing to work on the practice questions I’d prepared so I did a few of those on the white board to model.

Stage 2 Physics Tute: The group all passed the Physics test although some are looking to do better next time. Apparently most groups were not so uniformly successful so credit to Yul Sankey who taught the guys in Stage 1 last year. We did some vector analysis of momentum questions (The ones from the Senior Physics Practical book) which they seemed to be pretty competent at. We reviewed Solar Sails – examining the role of impulse in reflecting vs absorbing sails – and the concepts of elastic and inelastic collisions. Then we did some revision on electric fields – they did lots last year and just needed a few little reminders to get them back into the right kind of thinking. Finally we ran through their homework questions for the week to identify if there were any that might cause them problems. A very positive lesson.

Wednesday Week 8

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Stage 1 Physics: This is our tute session as not all of the class can attend. I’ve now signed up most of the class to blog on this site, I think. So we’ll see how that goes when they blog their summaries of the rocket launches. In today’s tute the class carried out the week 8 tute which can be found on edmodo – this was just a follow up to yesterdays ideas about waves and how they behave. We also looked at some of the parts of the two assessment tasks due Friday and asked questions about the material to be tested. What to expect in our First Stage 1 Physics Test.

10 F Science: I sent most of the class out to work on the computers looking at the skate park energy simulation as we’re up to the idea of all the kinetic energy of motion having to be turned into something else during a crash (This is a sim from PhET which won’t upload to edublogs for security reasons). Meanwhile I explained to those who’d skipped early on Monday that because I couldn’t trust them we’d miss out on somethings where I felt equipment would be at risk. We then used the sim as a class to examine the relationship between speed and kinetic energy and how motion can be turned into thermal energy as a way of stopping. I demonstrated how sometimes energy is stored in deformed materials (damage) and we discussed how the energy transformation to heat couldn’t take place quickly enough and so damage occurred as well. We looked at calculating kinetic energy and discussed the test next week. This class had the chance to contribute questions but chose not to.

8 Science: TEST! – took a couple of starts to get the idea of quiet in test situations. The results were groups of As, Bs, Cs and Ds more or less equal. The Ds concern me because I felt we’d really hammered the concepts around energy change and types of energy through numerous investigations, demonstrations and discussions as well as in notes and homework. I’ll gather those who got Ds around next lesson and work out why they weren’t successful and give them a homework task to show me they do understand the ideas. (The test was mostly true/false and multiple choice). We then began our RAFT task – I’ve taken the energy promoter who wants to convince investors that it’s worth putting money into a particular source of energy as the higher level task and distributed accordingly. research alternative energy. We had a few computer issues in the Library so I spent a lot of time ferrying students to the book shelves to point out alternative resources, rather than getting involved in keeping them thinking and on task. We had SSO support this lesson which helped keep some targeted students on track. The aim was that by the end of today the students would have mapped out how their energy source was used to create electricity and whether Australia had plenty of what was needed to do so. As per the Year 10 version the students doing the more challenging task were furthest ahead and had pretty much accomplished this part of the task.

Tuesday Week 8

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Stage 1 Physics: A little bit of a reminder about submitting the assignment and practical reports this week. I’m giving feedback and solutions (for the assignment) to those who submit before the end of the week so they can use to help prepare for their test. Started Topic 3: Waves with an overview about things that travel as waves and so why knowing about waves might be valuable. Used radio astronomy as an example as well as acoustics, mobile phones and optical fibers. I had set up a ripple tanks (old technology) so that we could create waves and observe wavelength and regularity of waves. A stroboscope “stopped” the waves and we recorded their wavelength and frequency. We then timed the waves as they crossed their tank. Using both methods we determined the speed and showed that frequency x wavelength equals the speed of the wave. We qualitatively examined reflection – they were quick to spot that reflections occur at the same angle of incidence – and refraction, although this was a little harder to see the change in speed of the waves as they moved to shallower water. The students then got to investigate amplitude and reflection in waves using slinky sprigs (one got seriously tangled) and determined that the amplitude was the energy of the wave, as that got less as the wave traveled. Waves in a Ripple Tank Reflection and Refraction in a Ripple Tank Waves in a Slinky Spring

10 B Science: This was only an 80 minute double but we achieved a lot. Reminder about upcoming test – students have access to a sheet discussing what they need to know for the test. Review of Newton’s Laws of Motion Review Questions on Newton and how they apply, students have a copy, – worked through questions as a class – individuals selected to provide answers. F = ma equation triangle discussed and used. Introduced to kinetic energy formula through a throwing balls demonstration – our thrower had a strong arm and threw the soccer ball with 4000J of energy. I’ve introduced kinetic energy here because braking of cars is achieved by removing their kinetic energy. Finally out to borrow the PE bikes (or some of them) and carry out the following investigation about braking distance and speed to determine their relationships. Most of the graphs showed the appropriate increasing curve that I was hoping for. The students put their data into the spread sheet and printed off the graphs. Braking Distance and Speed braking distance spreadsheet and graph

 

Monday Week 8

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Stage 2 Chemistry Tute: This was quite a lot of fun as the students were working on their Environmental Chemistry Presentations and they just needed help for small parts and ideas about how to show things so it was really just a put our heads together and work things out session. The greenhouse gas group and I had a good session around the causes and effects and ways to communicate these and made quite a bit of progress.

10 B Science: Last lesson on the RAFT task and boy was there a lot of noise (why are you making us do this when it’s so hard?) but not a lot of light from some of them. Overall though there were some very good presentations submitted and I enjoyed marking them. It appears that when I aligned tasks to what I thought was ability groups it was actually to effort groups so that those with the tasks I thought simplest had the most difficulty meeting the deadline while those with the most difficult task completed there tasks without a fuss and they were generally very good. As I would have expected from the latter group they went beyond the task I asked of them. Remember the script writer group – lots of complaints in the double – they produced some really good takes and while they’re not perfect scripts they did show knowledge of Newton’s Three Laws and did so in an interesting way … and they thought they couldn’t do it. The cartoonists spent too much time on art generally and I only got some in, but they did show some of the learning I wanted them to do. I didn’t get any posters or newspaper reports which I thought were the simplest tasks. Lots of promises that I’d be emailed the work this evening.

10 F Science: I’m losing lots of sleep over this class and today didn’t help. We were in the computer room to finish our RAFT task some students started straight away and made steady process to completion – some finished their newspaper reports or posters early and handed them in. The rest took a lot of the usual encouraging and reminders about what they were supposed to be doing and sitting down next to them and talking through the task again (that’s all fine I was expecting that). Some of those originally reluctant students, after a bit of grumbling, managed to finish the task to an appropriate level. Then there were the group who didn’t make any progress at all, despite me sitting with them and taking them step by step through the process. Unfortunately about half the class played up greatly in the last ten minutes and left early while I was helping some other students email their tasks to me. They took my big pot of marker pens too which left me feeling very sad and very flat and adding to my list of reasons not to be a teacher anymore.

Thursday Week 7

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10B Science: Starting the RAFT task today. I think I picked the students to take the role of the medical examiners well as they almost straight away brought up medical examiner reports and looked at how to structure their report – so they had the high achiever vibe going which I’d hoped for with this group. Next is for them to translate through the ideas of Newton’s Laws in car crashes. The cartoonists seemed quite happy after the initial “I can’t draw statements” but they did fall into the trap of creating art for the sake of the art rather than trying to communicate the method. The scriptwriters were the most vocal, maybe my choice of them was linked to this. However I think they found the task was going to be easier than they first feared, although they continued to protest their inability to write anything coherent and relied on me heavily. The few in this class doing the poster or newspaper report (needing less translation of material) were mostly a little slow to get started but I think they’ve figured out they can do the job. Overall I was quite pleased with how my distribution turned out but less so with how the roles fitted to levels of ability – the script writer was easier than I anticipated, or maybe because they were the ones most often calling for help I provided a little too much.

10F Science: I’d handed out a couple of script writer roles and one cartoonist I think. I chose the cartoonist with a different person with this class, in 10B I deliberately avoided the artists in the class. In 10F I chose the person who most loves to draw as engagement is my big issue with this class. Most of the class were doing newspaper reports (I’m old fashioned, none of them have read a paper! – I’ll have to change this one for future use) or poster manufacturers. With some SSO support some of the poster makers made good starts. The problem I faced was getting engagement but found that most of the class were at least willing to give talk about the ideas with me if not use the computers provided.

Stage 2 Physics Tute: The group said they were quite happy about the last test and are starting to receive feedback from their practical report drafts – we tried to work through some of that, well into lunch time in some cases. We examined momentum, the group were a little woolly about the idea so started with 1D momentum, which they picked up quickly, before going on to 2D. We looked at all the conceptual questions in the book for this chapter on momentum and impulse without any problems and attacked some of the computational problems. The group seemed quite happy and confident about momentum after this.

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