Category: Science Education

Today my regular physics students conducted their ball drop test. Students mark where they predict the ball will bounce to. After my first day with this lab, I realized I needed a better sheet for them to mark on (I film each drop to get the ‘exact’ bounce height), so here’s a copy of the new prediction half-sheet I developed:...

OK, I didn’t take any photos today, just too busy helping students to remember. Today’s reflection: Don’t worry about spending too much time establishing good lab/classroom practices with your students. If you lead a student-centered class, it may be the first time they have really experienced that, and they need to learn the ropes. Today I didn’t get nearly as...

OK, I broke down and did a PowerPoint slideshow 🙂 I let my students know that I realized that I hadn’t provided enough instruction in what I was looking for in a whiteboard, then showed the slideshow. I then gave them time to update their whiteboards, and the improvement was dramatic!

Today my students collected data for the bouncy ball lab, then processed it and started on whiteboards. I have them using Desmos to plot their data (my fist time using this with a class), and it seems to be going well. Tomorrow will be our first whiteboard meeting!

OK, I gotta remember to take photos of my students in action…so for today I just have a photo of my lab grading guidelines and metric prefixes that hang all around my classroom. As you can partially see on my “Day minus 3” post, my room is designed with no “front.” Here are a couple of comments from students today:...

This is the first of my attempt at a “180” blog. 180 blogs aim for “a picture a day” from a teacher’s classroom, along with a short reflection. The “180” comes from, I believe, the fact that there are about 180 teaching days in a year. If you’d like to watch my 180 posts without any other posts, you can...