This past year, my school was transitioning to a new 4-year curriculum. To help get it started, I taught 2 sections of the new first year course: Modeling Chemistry. It was the first time the class was happening, my first (and probably last) time teaching chemistry, and there weren’t a lot of other 9th grade… Read More 9th Grade Chemistry Objectives
It’s time to register for this summer’s AAPT HS Physics Teacher Camp! The camp happens on the Sunday of the summer national meeting of AAPT. This year, that meeting is in Cincinnati, and the camp will take place at a nearby high school in Covington, KY. This year’s date is Sunday, July 23rd (in 2017—for those of… Read More High School Physics Teacher Camp 2017
One of the best things about my current school is that the students push me to rethink practices that I’ve taken for granted in the past. They even push me to rethink practices that I’ve put lots of effort and intention into developing, like my final exams. “Can we have a group test?” I’m in… Read More “Can we have a group test?” Alternative Assessments in Science Classes (Part 1)
It’s observation/evaluation time at my school. This year is my 3rd at this school, and that means I have a bigger process this year than I’ve had before. Four people will be visiting my classes over the next couple of weeks, and I have been thinking about what I want them to look at/for and… Read More Being “Smart” in Science Class
I’m really excited to announce the AAPT High School Physics Teacher Camp 2016. The camp will be held on Sunday, July 17th (that’s the Sunday of the AAPT summer meeting) from 8 am – 5 pm at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, CA. What is Physics Teacher Camp? The camp is a day-long interactive… Read More Physics Teacher Camp 2016
I don’t do lab reports. Maybe that’s a strange way to begin, here, but stick with me. I haven’t found lab reports to be useful assessment tools in the past. Instead, I have claimed that our work in the lab is too important to grade. It’s the basis of all of our knowledge. On the one… Read More Assessing Scientific Abilities
AKA Inventing a New Flavor of Energy Storage When we start the energy unit, we usually pick up 4 flavors (kinetic, gravitational, spring, and thermal) and note that we will recognize and name other ways of storing energy when we see them. That happens pretty immediately when we do pie charts. We run into a problem pretty… Read More Tic Tac Bounce
In my college summers, I was a camp counselor at a Girl Scout camp in Michigan. (Bear with me, this is going somewhere.) During my first summer, I loathed having to spend one night per week sleeping outside and tried to find any way out of it. During the staff training week the second summer,… Read More This Class is SO My Class
So first, some background. I taught at a new-to-me school this year, and it currently has a lot of one-trimester-long classes, including for the 9th and 10th grade sciences (they rotate through biology, chemistry, and physics, though not in a particular order). These little “tastes” of physics make it more challenging to develop a class… Read More Standards-Based Grading: 5, 6, 8, 10
This fall, I will be starting my 2nd year at a really cool progressive day school in NYC. The science curriculum is in the process of evolving, but the current program has 9th and 10th graders rotating twice through physics, chemistry, and biology (in any order) on a trimester system. This past year, I taught… Read More Circuits and Charges: A Physics Active Exam
Physics! Blog! 