The first assessment of the year happened in my Electric Circuits class. I am adding in “practical objectives” to the list of skills, so the test included building a simple circuit. (This is Unit 1, folks.)
I’m sure it seemed trivial to them today, but I was really glad to see them all find it so easy since it wasn’t an obvious task (even when looking at a photo) on the first day of class.
One of my Physics 10 classes had their 3rd meeting today. They worked in groups on problems, tried out some meta group roles (longer blog post about that coming some day) and did their first round of whiteboard presentations. They are the picky class for sure, and they are still finding their balance of being picky (which can be great!) without being too intense.
I asked them to put mistakes in their work, and I was really impressed by their willingness to be wrong, fix their mistakes publicly, and field lots of questions. There were LOTS of great questions prompting lots of reflection on word choice and meaning, especially about slopes. Coming from a #ModChem class last year, they are really okay with talking to each other and sorting things out through discussion with minimal input from me.
Picky classes always get hung up on motion maps, but that also means really good conceptual discussions about the distance travelled in an interval of time, direction of motion, and more.
The top image from this post was from my extended advisory period this afternoon!
O'Shea Physics 180 