11 Intro

11 Physics - Introductory Unit

Day one of grade 11 physics sets the stage for students' experience learning physics. It can confirm all the impressions they have ever had about physics, or it can delight and surprise them! First impressions count and affect how students commit to learning physics. Start things off well!

Article: Quick Guide for Teaching Physics: The Introductory Lessons

Article: Set Up Your Classroom to Boost Learning

Article: The Science of Group Work

Article: A Numbers Game: the Significant Digits Racket

Digital Resources: Here

Lesson 1: How Groups Work

Goals:

Introduce students to the way we learn physics and train them how to work effectively in groups.
Start to dispel the myths about what kind of people can do physics.
Get them doing science within 15 minutes of the start of class

Article: The Science of Group Work

The PowerPoint course guide is an important part of the lesson. It shows how I introduce the course and what I explain before I get students going in the investigation.

Here is the flow of this lesson:

Intro: Students sit in their groups and I introduce myself. I immediately give them a quiet whiteboard task to do while I take the attendance. I asked them what ideas the word "physics" brings to mind. Here are some of their responses:

How People Learn: I quickly discuss the rationale behind our group-work learning process for physics, and explain how groups sit and find their equipment. Then we get to today's investigation:

11 Intro - How Groups Work.pdf

Within 15 minutes of the start of the class, they are engaged in their investigation and have started learning. No wasted time! I try to optimize the flow of the class from their point of view: how much time do they want to spend on classroom administration? Very little! Here they go:

Signing up for group roles

Working away in their groups

Learning Names: Now I need to learn who is who. Even though they sit at assigned tables, I want to practice their names and I want them to see me practicing. Next class they will sit in different groups, so I need to learn them right away! I carry around with me their table numbers and visit each group as I practice. By the end of class I have most names memorized. The bonus challenge is that tomorrow is the weekend, so I won't be using them again until Monday!

Experiment Design: Their challenge is to measure the drop height and rebound height for a bouncy ball. They brainstorm ideas that will help them do this more accurately and share these on their whiteboards. This is great practice for the recorders and speakers. Then they start their measurements.

Testing Their Model: They have created a scientific model that will allow them to predict the bounce height of the ball from a range of drop heights. I give them a drop height that is taller than their meter stick. Once they have a prediction, they test at our Drop Zone!

Something Funny: I have a 2-m measuring tape (with zero at the bottom) attached to the door frame to test their predictions. Many groups had difficulty finding a value like 117 cm. They were looking high up, around 17 cm past the end of the tape!

Challenge: Explain their thinking here!

Wrap-Up: We quickly wrapped things up, showed them the syllabus so they can find tonight's homework and pointed out the course outline for reading.

Done!

Lesson 2: Learning Physics

Goals:

Learn how to write thoughtful responses
Learn how their work will be assessed
Train them how to use their phones responsibly
Train them in productive mindsets for learning (collaboration and improvement)

Students are seated in new, random groups. We begin the lesson with an activity about attention and our phones:

Improv Activities for Physics

There are many impediments to good learning. A big one is not saying what you are thinking for fear of being wrong. To help students understand this, we go through four improvisation activities often used in drama classes. Each activity helps students practice listening to one another, talking to each other, and not worrying about being wrong. These activities help lay the groundwork for effective interpersonal relationships. These skills are crucial in technical fields, but are often completely neglected.

Listen to them go!

Learning Physics Lesson

Now we are ready to start the new lesson! Luckily, it is a short one. The lesson covers a number of important learning ideas. I want to reset their thinking about learning to focus not on being right/wrong or smart/not smart, but on thoughtful work and learning from your mistakes.

11 Intro - Learning Physics.pdf

Learning Names

The students are in different places today! I have a new sheet with groups and names, so I keep learning. I think I have got them now! Tomorrow will be the test.

Homework

I collected the homework from the first class. About 24 out of 29 people handed it in. The lesson teaches the students how they will get feedback from their submitted work. This particular work focused on observations of group work self-reflection. Everyone who handed it in received an "A".

A = Acceptable = 100%

M = Minor fixes necessary = 0%

I = Improvements necessary = 0%

Don't reward incomplete or substandard work because their learning is not yet done! Keep their focus on improvement and not on the particular grade. When the improvements or fixes are done, then the work is acceptable = 100%. Simple! "I" requires students to complete the improvements in my presence. "M" means they can make the fixes any time and show me.

Sample homework collected and marked.

Marking

Especially early on in the course, I collect lots of work from students. This helps students establish their work routines for the course. It takes me about 15 minutes to go through a class set of work. I do not make corrections - this is the students' job! This is what I do:

Scan the page for care and completion.
Identify two or three key questions and read them carefully.
Mark up the page using our 4C's notion (see today's lesson)
Assign the work an "A", "M" or "I"
Record a check for acceptable work or a circle for work that I have seen, but needs to be fixed.

N.B. I circle spelling mistakes! They need to fix these! Clear communication requires minimal spelling mistakes.

Lesson 3: Measurement and Numbers

Goals

Learn how to make measurements and estimations
Learn how to think about and write numbers

Article: A Numbers Game: the Significant Digits Racket

Article: Units and Conversions

Neuroscience of Learning

We begin this lesson with a quick discussion about the homework, which was about the neuroscience of learning and the growth mindset.

After this I collected their homework.

Measurement and Numbers Lesson

We discuss horoscopes and then jump into our new lesson:

11 Intro - Measurement and Numbers.pdf

It is great to see the independence students are starting to develop. They start working very quickly and find the equipment they need when they need it - no instructions required!

Estimations

An important skill we introduce is estimating. Today, they practiced estimating the height of their table, the length of the room, the time to walk that length, and estimate a speed calculation for their walk. The purpose for all this is to begin building their intuitive sense of physical quantities. It is this missing sense that was responsible for the strange difficulty many students had in our first lesson (see the "something funny" comment in lesson one). The goal is this: everytime we measure something we should be doing an intuitive check to decide whether the measurement result seems "right". This relies on estimation skills. Similarly with calculations, the results need to seem "right", so they need to practice making ballpark-style calculations.

Self-Evaluation

Students do not improve unless they regularly think critically about their work. To practice this, we choose a key question from each lesson. When they have answered it, students bring their work to the front of the class and compare it with an exemplar:

The exemplar contains lots of commentary. Otherwise students will not understand why this response might be better than theirs. Based on what they see, they make corrections or improvements to their work using blue pen. This way, I can see their original work and what changes they chose to make.

Significant Digits and Writing Numbers

Students need to understand the idea behind significant digits: these are the digits in a number that are reliable in some sense. In grade 11, we can only decide on the number of significant digits for a measurement, where the number of digits is limited by the measuring device and process. We do not have the understanding to determine the number of significant digits in any other number. The typical rules taught in high school are not used in the real world (in research or industry) and cause needless frustration, so don't teach them! As a result, we simply say "we don't know how many, so we'll keep four during calculations and three in a final statement".

Learning Log

Making study notes is valuable when you first learn the material, not when studying for a test! New learning requires immediate reinforcement and the learning log encourages students to summarize the new skills and ideas each day. It also teaches students how to study for tests by breaking down their learning into skills and ideas. Each of these should be treated in different ways while studying. Students can use their learning logs during the test and must hand them in with the test.

A Learning Log from the astronomy unit of my grade 9 science class.

Lesson 3.5: Taking Up Homework from Lesson 3

The next lesson is the start of our motion unit, but we took some time to look at the homework from the measurements lesson.

Writing Math Work

We have a highly structured process for showing our math work. To train students, I have them look at the exemplar on the screen and use blue pens to write improvements to their work:

Student's corrections in red. My bonus corrections in green.

Estimation Skills

I want students to be able to estimate simple calculations. Here is an example from this set of homework. They "round" the numbers to ones that are simple to do mental math with:

Interpretation Skills

It is not enough to complete a calculation correctly! We need to make sense of the result. This speed calculation is about as simple as we can get, but a careful interpretation actually requires some sophisticated thinking. Most students correctly explain that the result means "for every minute, the car travels a distance of 1.2 km". But there is another level of thinking to this! This is a great example of why physics is not just another math class: there are important, implicit assumptions that go into a "simple" interpretation like the one above. This student nails it:

Marking and Improvements

The process of improvement continues! I have now collected three pieces of work from my students. They have received the first two back and have started making their improvements. On my marks page, you can see the checks for (A)cceptable work (explained in Lesson 2 above), a circle for work that was submitted but needs improvement (M or I); and a check in the circle once it was resubmitted and acceptable. Note the high level of submissions (almost every student); homework is getting done. Soon those circles will be checked!

This might seem like a lot of work but I try to do it very efficiently: it takes about 15 minutes per class set and some extra time at lunch for students to visit and make their improvements. I think it is a very important component of my job. Students need immediate feedback and should make improvements until their learning is done and their work is acceptable. Until then, it's a zero! Some students will have to submit the work multiple times.

Here I circled the "M" to emphasize that the minor fixes are not yet done!

And here the work was improved and is now acceptable!

One Day Later

Getting there! Most of the improvements have come in.

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