Wednesday was missed as I spent the afternoon at SMAF helping out with the Stage 2 Chemistry reaction rates practical. Nice to have a different speed for a while. The Stage 1 Physics class looked at putting together the results of our practical investigations and from that we derived Newton’s second law. Year 8 Science started work on an edmodo based assignment that introduced them to the particle theory of matter. Unfortunately they didn’t get as much time as they were supposed to so I’ll have to finish it off tomorrow.

10 B Science: Everything seemed to work well this lesson. The students made a good job of constructing a practical report and I got to support the students who were unsure about some parts and give them more confidence about the task. Then the really difficult task. I took the responses to the question about what the data on energy left unsaid and randomly divided the class into small groups – each one with a question. The task was to design a way to find the answer to the question and construct it as if it were the first part of an investigation report. The results were great and are now on the walls in the room – photos to come.

10 F Science: Hoped to get the class to the point where they posted responses to interesting, unexpected and don’t quite believe it based on the energy data and a post in response to what didn’t the data answer. Got there in the end but it was a bit of a struggle for some (looks like there have been lots of late nights amongst some of the class). Unfortunately tomorrow I have to do a presentation for a Year 7 class when I’d normally have this class.

Stage 2 Physics: We looked at questions using Young’s Double Slit and went through part of the derivation again. This included some written responses so that I could work with those who are a bit lazy in this area and those who tend to over complicate. Final part of the session was an introduction into how CDs/DVDs work.

Tonight we have a huge full moon so I took a few snaps trying different camera settings. Atmospheric effects magnify the moon (it looks bigger closer to the horizon for similar reasons.

Anyhow on to what happened today.

Stage 2 Chemistry Tutorial: Some students needed to modify their design for the reaction rate practical and worked on that, a couple even tried out the changes to see if they worked so I was shuttling between the Chemical bunker and the lab. Others were working on the equilibrium tute paper. I was able to teach a little about Le Chatelier’s principle, Kc values and the contact process but was a bit antsy at the end as I like everyone to finish before they go – however that’s my problem, most of the students seemed perfectly satisfied with their achievements in the session. Wednesday they are carrying out the investigation.

10 B Science: Handed back the exams – as previously mentioned they mostly did well so they were quite happy to get them back. Then we started our Semester 2 Assessment Plan Term 3. Our first topic is about energy for the future and we started some activities where I want students to think about what they already know or at least think they know. The class classified the following statements Energy future task 1 as either true of false. I listed the selections from across the class they identified as False and checked to see if the whole class agreed with these selections. They didn’t completely and some good arguments were put forward although some failed to convince the majority of the class, others did. I’ll post the class choices in the classroom so we can refer to them during our further learning.

10 F Science: Our double lesson – the class arrived very slowly, a few at a time and I asked them to form groups as they arrived, this was challenging and a few of them couldn’t handle being in a group with others. Exams were handed out – I told the class that a number of them had done well considering how much less of the course we managed to cover than some of the other classes. Next up I started the task from above – they did this quite quickly and I repeated the challenge situation – I think they changed their minds on about half of their original choices. The true and false selections are now posted in the classroom. We then continued on further with the activity to allow them to find what they already know Energy sources Our Energy Future. We managed to complete the activities although post-it-notes went everywhere, often with unsavoury things written on them but by the end we had contributions from most groups posted around the room which I’ll have to collate tomorrow. (I spent the latter part of the day after the staff meeting updating the science net-books so my Year 8s can use them on Wednesday (well most of them anyway)). I did get as far as handing out the compressed information sheet about energy sources and asked them just to have a look at it. Energy in Australia. Our next job is to look at these more closely with the objective of identifying what they don’t tell us.

Tomorrow morning 8F are running the assembly – we have a little video about three classes combining to learn some maths. Once again, however, they haven’t given me a selection of music to play while the students are entering. So I’m going to show this Space Oddity

I think the only way to get them to choose music is to sing myself!

Year 8 Science: The properties of three states of matter; solid, liquid and gas, were investigated today. We followed the pattern shown here State of matter. Students investigated in groups and recorded observations before making a general statement about each of the states we were investigating. The gas state was mostly demonstrations – I made carbon dioxide and blew carbon dioxide bubbles with it, which we again confirmed had weight as they dropped very quickly to the ground. The groups were arranged depending on the students matching states of matter cards they had chosen although some are determined not to sit next to anyone not in their clique and are very sneaky about making sure they don’t so I’ll have to think of alternative ways to change them around. I think the students got most of the points and while I’d like to spend a little more time exploring I won’t be there for our next lesson (seriously I’ve had more time out of the school this term  than I normally rack up in a year) so I decided they’ll start on creating a mental model of matter. They chose to do this using ICT so I’ve booked laptops and am now organising a bit of a webquest for them. This lesson was a bit crowded and I forgot to pick up the homework so they’ve got a bit of extra time. Here’s some pictures of the students trying to compress a liquid (they failed but were really good at compressing gases later) and seeing what happened to liquids when the container is changed – they told me nothing happened when they put the solids into different containers, which we corrected to the solid didn’t change its shape.

Big weekend of organising four classes on edmodo coming up.

Stage 2 Physics Tutorial: The group attacked the 2009 exam (2D motion questions) and had much improved over their ability to handle the vector problems. This is a good sign as they are getting ready for their mid-year exam. I also took them through the derivation of the Young’s Double Slit equation (interference patterns between 2 coherent sources). They will go through it again on Wednesday (and probably the diffraction derivation) but they were a little confused about it from the practical and I know that the more times they are taken through it the more they’ll understand and remember. It should make the explanation on Wednesday seem even clearer.

That’s it – I know, very slack. But I have been marking Year 10 exams as noted earlier and am using the time to do the creation of new materials that is hard to accomplish during the “normal” parts of the term. Also I’m having to put together my own practicals as we’re without a lab assistant for a few weeks – life’s tough.

Only the one subject other than pastoral care (which other teachers did a good job of organising and I just did the verbal instructions)

10 B Science: The exam!! This class were probably the only group not to see part of the exam before hand. This was deliberate as we want to push this group as much as we can. Our revision was done independently on edmodo – I think I’d mentioned that I’d organised videos with quiz questions which actually instructed them how to do the difficult skills. We didn’t do any rote learning but concentrated more on applying knowledge and ideas in real world situations – these are the skills stage 1 students often have difficulty with and we really want this group to enter their stage one subjects with the expectation that they will do this type of thinking. Anyhow I’ve marked them and the majority did well, with some doing really well. Especially the multiple choice questions were done well where I’d put in several stage one level questions. I did have to crack a few egos to get them to follow exam rules properly but it was their third exam of the day and I expect they were worn out by the end of the day.

Here’s the year next Year 10 Science topic Our Energy Future

Stage 2 Chemistry Tutorial: We worked through the tutorial about reaction rates and cleared up a few things such as orientation and the other effects of catalysts. The students then read through a past mid-year exam and asked questions about the parts they were uncertain about. I didn’t get asked enough questions by the students who should really have been asking me questions. I hope they’ll catch up with me tomorrow.

10 F Science: The Exam! Not too bad an effort around the exam conditions. Lots of behaviour reminders given but with one exception they took them pretty well and tried to follow the instructions. While these students won’t be marked against the full criteria of the exam a number of them were successful at this level and deserve praise for their efforts especially as this class covered the least and didn’t really try a lot of higher order thinking tasks. I gave stamps for the parts of the exam they did well in, some students got six or seven stamps which was pleasing.

Year 8 Science: Today’s lesson was all about finishing off the cells e-books. Some of the class did this admirably. There are some really good cell books but we’re having difficulty getting them off the iPads to send them home, despite that we’d thought we’d solved this problem. Still it is now narrowed down. I’m running catch up sessions next week at lunch times for those students who really didn’t do a good job of their books and some who were escorting year 6 and 7s around the school. Hopefully we’ll be able to improve on some of the books.Homework is just a sheet to find out about how much the students did on matter in Year 7. I’ve got mixed results from Wednesday’s homework – some Year 7 teachers went a lot further than others with definitions, so my job with those students will be to provide the evidence and thinking behind them while bringing the rest of the class up to the same point. matter homework

10F Science: Gave firm instructions about how the students should behave during the exam on Monday, emphasising that it is about practicing for exams rather than doing a science exam. I stressed their responsibility to allow other students to succeed and that they don’t have a right to disrupt others. They didn’t counter the arguments. We then carried on with the “revision” of looking at some of the questions in the exam.  A few paid close attention. As of week 9 we’re off the “mandatory” Chemistry and Physics introductions and I can give the students more opportunity to direct our investigations if they wish to take it.

Stage 1 Physics: Only one of the students who missed the exam time turned up to do the exam in this session.