Wow, only a week in and I'm already dropping the ball. I totally missed taking pictures for most of the week. On Day 6 I'd meant to take a picture during our Parent Night, but that was such a whirlwind that I never got to it. I have no pictures, so I will just give the capsule descriptions I'd have used.
For parent night we only have about seven minutes with each group. I began with a capsule description of Physics and asked them to recall Newton's Third Law. With a little prompting they were able to recall it. We then discussed applications of. The law while I pushed a wall. We then talked a bit about what a Modeling Classroom looks like and what it doesn't look like. Then I modeled the Earth moon system with a basketball and tennis ball and the actual distance they should be apart to highlight the misconceptions we often harbor. I finish with the question, "Which pulls harder, the Earth on the Moon or the Moon on the Earth?" I love this because they all forget the N3 discussion from five minutes earlier. Thus helping illustrate that telling isn't teaching.
Day 7 - We did circle labs in honors physics today. We had a collection of circles to work with. They needed to do two investigations, at least one of which used area as a variable. All variables must be measured directly, no calculating circumference or area. I really like this as it gives us a very familiar constant.
Day 8 - My electronics class is starting to take off. The class centers around the use of the Arduino Microcontroller. It's kind of awesome. There is no state mandated curriculum and my administration lets me do whatever I want with the class. I have a web page with lessons for students to work through and they work through them at their own rate. When they finish a "Unit" the call me over and I assess their mastery of the material presented.
Ok, next week I'll try to be better and have a picture to go with each day.
