Wednesday was Parent Interview night and I wasn’t fully recovered so I just got home and collapsed.

Stage 1 Physics Tute: We covered errors, how to format an effective Physics practical report and did some review work on angles of reflection and the cause of colours. This tute format is not working. The students who miss this session don’t seem to tackle the questions, as far as I can tell the answers I do with audio don’t get downloaded and I avoid doing some of the practice at the point of learning because I’m saving it for the tute and can’t afford to have new learning spill over into the tute time. I need a holiday rethink about this.

10 F Science: I did the group one metals demonstration (included a video on the cesium explosion) and looked at the organisation of the periodic table and how it related to the reactivity of the group one metals.

8 Science: Short lesson today due to parent interviews. I was planning on doing a couple of practical investigations around making metamorphic “rocks” from foods. Only got to do the bread one as a lot of re-focusing was required this lesson (excited about getting out 45 minutes early and reports etc …) Metamorphic Rocks Power Point

10B Science: Finished off the demonstrations I didn’t manage on Monday to tie in metals and their shared reactions but different reactivities. The task I set on Tuesday got garbled in translation and the students thought they had to create their work on the iPads. They found that extremely difficult. Two students went away and created pages of their own volition – initiative and perceptiveness in one go. I congratulated them heartily. I’ll scan the pages and post them up here. For the rest of the lesson I wanted to do theory around the structure of the atom and the ways in which one atom differed from the next. I used a couple of PhET simulations one on the Rutherford model – just to roughly explain why we think the atom looks the way we think it does – and another about making atoms so we could look at protons, neutrons, electrons, charge, full shells etc. I think the class took on board part of this but I’ll need to keep revisiting and using the periodic table to emphasis. No homework it’s the last week. I’m going to have to work a lot harder to get these students to start blogging about their science knowledge, at the moment I think they’re working on the tactic that if they ignore it long enough it will go away.

10 F Science: The structure of the atom work as above. On the way out the class did a couple of quizzes on the PhET simulation about making atoms where, with a little initial prompting, they got everything right. So well done them.

Stage 2 Physics Tute: I spent most of this lesson watching the students work on excel as they were writing up their practical from the previous week. I did give some help about ways to manipulate the data and structure their analysis but I have a hard time letting go and not doing any out and out teaching.

I was sick. I went home at Recess on Monday.

Stage 2 Chemistry Tute: We worked on the reports for the volumetric analysis of the concentration of ethanoic acid in white wine. The calculations were done correctly and I worked them to try and match their reports to the assessment plan. I suggested they tick off each bit as they do it. We also reviewed Chromatography and the relationship between Rf values and polarity. Very briefly at the end we reviewed AAS.

10 B Science: This is about when the lurgie hit me. I did hand out periodic tables (I’d put a lot of time into choosing the right ones) and I demonstrated the reactivity of the group one metals and got the students to record this on the sheet I’d prepared. I made hydrogen gas (a bit slow, didn’t get the Aluminium foil far enough in the sodium hydroxide solution). Through being fumbled fingered (I think the room might have been starting to spin at this point) the gas escaped.

10 F Science: Set a video on chemistry and worksheet on the history of nylon (as we’re going to be making new chemicals as part of our chemistry unit). I would suspect this wasn’t a great success but I’ll see when I return.

I missed Tuesday and I like Tuesdays

Stage 1 Physics: I had practicals planned but settled for a relief where they worked on their practical reports (short double) with some help from resources I’d put on edmodo about resonance.

10 B Science: I think I was slightly ambitious with this task – research one of the first 30 elements – each person a different one – and then arrange their A4 pages as a periodic table – Class cooperation. I don’t think this will have happened as I imagined in my fevered brain this morning.

10 B Science: The video allowed us to recap our learning throughout this topic and elicited comments from the students on the topic. Next up was the big attempt to get the class up so that they could post on this blog. The students who previously signed up for their own blog had forgotten their passwords so despite the fact I’d put them on posting privileges on this site they had to re-register. I tried to use iPads as they reliably connect to the network and hence the internet. This worked well until the students were required to prove they were human, a function not supported by the iPads. Undaunted I rolled out the netbooks and again when they logged in, after the usual delay, things went well until they were required to prove they were human. This bit took the remaining twenty minutes of lesson time to load (or not load). So in the end I’ve added two students to this blog. One now has a published short blog, the other is still in draft form and awaiting completion. In exasperation I set the rest of the class homework to sign up to edublogs.

10 F Science: What learning did we accomplish this lesson? Well I did get to review the role of energy transfers in removing speed from a car in a crash – particularly through braking and crumple zones on cars. After two weeks of only one group being involved in crashing the carts and modifying them to make them safer I’ve decided to move on. I’ll do another summary next lesson and begin the process of communicating laboratory and chemical safety ideas to them. I have to look at ways of changing their head set from education is something that is done to you.

Stage 2 Physics Tute: Spent quite a deal of time unpacking what they needed to do for their practical report. Cliff Rothenberg has given them a hand out to help with writing a practical report according to the standards. Pretty much matched the stuff we do in Chemistry only in a general form. We did a little revision for their up coming test and covered some more of the questions around electric fields.

During the above tute I have one of the Stage 1 students work on their Physics as he is unable to make our Friday class – he worked on the practical around determining the speed of sound using resonance frequencies. His result was pretty close to actual value.

After doing experiments involving a cart and dummy I have noticed a few things:

If there is no safety protection in the car like a seat belt and bumper, the person riding in the car will suffer huge injuries compared to if there was.

After the second experiment once we added a seat belt and bumper to the cart, we noticed there was no injuries to the barbie (head didn’t fall off and it stayed in its seat).

We watched some videos in class and this made me realise the motion energy turns into heat energy when the brakes are applied. Just like when a car crash occurs the energy of the cars crumbling turns into heat.