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My teaching philosophy is quite simple: You learn by doing. During a typical lesson (either one period or several) you will be presented with a problem addressing a commonly held misconception, a surprising observation, or activity to spark your interest or curiosity. You will then be asked to make a prediction or hypothesis based on you current understanding of the world around you. The next step will be to obtain some data to support or refute your hypothesis. This will be supported with individual, small group and whole class discussions. Finally you will be asked to present your findings to the class, to be subjected to a peer review of your data and ideas. Additionally there will be a summative assessment at the end of each lesson or unit to address both your physics concept understandings and data analysis skills. In short, you will learn physics by doing physics. I believe this applies in all aspects of learning, if you are a 5 year old studying the patterns of the weather, a fourth grade student learning the basics of multiplication, a middle schooler focused on the question of who they are in relation to society, a Junior exploring the relationship between electricity and magnetism or an adult learning to create their first Google Form to be used in their class, we learn best by doing.
Kevin Collins
email: sircollins88@gmail.com or kcollins@acs.sch.ae
School v. Learning
School v. Learning
Within the parameters of the IB curriculum, my goal is to skew to the right in this dichotomy. While there are always shades of grey between the extremes, it is my firm belief that it is our role as teachers to establish a culture of learning within our classroom. I believe that within the basic structure of an introductory physics curriculum the subject lends itself to right side of the chart.
We will start all topics and most lessons with the opportunity for the student to ask questions about phenomena featured in the course. From there students will be challenged to answer these questions within a lab practical. It has been my experience that many of the questions attempt to justify observations made in class with ideas the students have held for many years. When a student has the opportunity to discuss these ideas with classmates, the learning becomes both personal and societal. While time consuming, this will be achieved through the creation of whiteboard presentations of student findings within lab settings. The lab practicals will be created or adjusted to answer student questions as often as possible, allowing students to answer their own questions with empirical data.
I have created a radar chart of an inverted Likert scale of frequency:
Always 2. Often 3. Sometimes 4. Rarely 5. Never
This radar chart puts 'learning' at the center and 'school' at the edge. According to the table above a perfect learning environment would have a dot of blue in the center.
Some of the obvious high points (>=3) in the chart are creating, passions, personal, and random/non-linear. Due to the nature of an IB DP course, a balance of school and learning must take place. I would hope that all students enrolled in a DP physics class will have some personal passion and interest in the subject, however, the course syllabus dictates that there are some prescribed topics that we must explore. While. the content is highly standardized, the manner in which we study the content will be as personalized as possible within the class. Finally, a subject as reductive as physics is inherently sequential, however we will strive to bring all areas of the course to light whenever possible.
All credit to George Couros: Innovate Inside the Box.
Two Phases of Learning:
Information Transfer:
Information Transfer:
Sense Making:
Sense Making:
Who? (Curated collection of resources suited to each topic/lesson)
Online Video Collections:
Online Website Based Collections
ThePhysicsClassroom + Concept Builders
Physics Boot Camp (some calculus)
Physical Materials:
IB Physics Review Book
Student Responsibility:
Student Responsibility:
Read and take notes on assigned readings / sites.
Watch and take notes over assigned videos.
Reflect on readings and videos by asking: "Why is that true?"
Understand that exposure to content does not mean you have learned the material.
Exposure ≠ Learned
Who? (Mr. Collins)
Who? (Mr. Collins)
Coach and encouragement giver
Design and implement sense making activities
Offer feedback
Answer questions
Clarify information received
Give and grade assessments
Student Responsibility:
Student Responsibility:
Participate in class activities and relate them to the information transfer tasks.
Ask LOTS of questions
Seek out feedback from peers and teacher
ASK LOTS of questions.
Engage with learning tasks and formative assessments meaningfully (don't just google answers)
ASK LOTS of QUESTIONS!!!
Become comfortable with mistakes and being wrong at first.
Adapted from: Joe Milliano @MrJoeMilliano
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