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)
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
So you’re thinking in terms of physical models now instead of in terms of chapters, units, or equations. Now what? Is there a high-level ordering of these ideas? How are they connected? Are there common themes? One activity that I’ve done to help students build higher-level organization into their thinking is concept maps (which I… Read More Mechanics: 3 Fundamental Principles
Exam writing is looming just around the corner (May 30th is the big day this year). In response, I am turning to the traditional writing-procrastination technique: entertaining ideas about possible changes for next year’s classes (procrastinating on writing advising letters two years ago resulted in my moving to standards-based grading in the first place, so it… Read More Extra Tests, Bundled Objectives, and Changes for Next Year
We (the physics pholks) used to have a big tub of whiteboard markers that stayed in the classroom all the time. We would sometimes come in to find that students had written all over the board the night before (during study hall—boarding school), but the real problem was that very few students felt any obligation… Read More Class Marker Buckets
At this point (just over 3/4 of the way through), I’ve written 221 extra tests this year for my 44 students. Extra tests are individual tests That’s in addition to the 72 in-class tests so far this year (and the 2 end-of-semester exams). Since I last wrote about keeping track of extra testing, I’ve made… Read More Update: Managing Extra Tests
I wrote earlier about not assigning specific homework in my classes, a move that I made starting in the 2nd semester last year. I was so happy about how it went last year that I basically continued the policy this year. On my course evaluations two weeks ago, I asked a couple of questions that… Read More Student views on No Physics Homework
Before we can start building the Balanced Force Particle Model, we have to overcome some language problems. As was frequently said at the Modeling Workshop that I attended (and is repeated frequently in my classroom), “Physics is a foreign language that sounds just like English.” The word force is a prime offender, so we need to… Read More Common Types of Forces (BFPM Cheat Sheet)
This question, “What do you think is the essential toolkit for a first time SBG implementer?” was posted in the comments on my last post. So after rambling a bit myself, I threw it over to Twitter to see what other people had to say. Here’s what I got. A lot of good advice! Know… Read More The essential toolkit for a first time SBG implementer?
After a recent Global Physics Department meeting about Standards-Based Grading (SBG), I got to thinking about how I would adapt my grading scheme if I taught more than 40 or 50 students per year (which many of the teachers at the meeting were/are doing). One idea that I had was about doing more of the… Read More Choose Your Test Flavor
Physics! Blog! 