Today’s Day 1 (2nd first day of school) of Physics went as smoothly as it could go. I forgot how fun it is to teach the 9th graders as everything in high school is still brand new for them. They came in with a nervous excitement…Ms. Medrano had their seating chart ready to go…
Then we quickly realized that my seating chart did not match the classroom map. That’s okay – we will switch gears and just assign groups to tables. I love that the 9th graders just went with the flow and created new seating groups. One of the teachers threw out changing seats every day. I’m open to that idea…for now.
Students did the Making Squares activity. Some groups had a bunch of different ideas that they documented, others had one idea. They were definitely a bit apprehensive at first, and a few were scared of messing up. I had to remind them a few times that messing up is fine, and it’s just more important to try at this point. That statement gave students permission to try different things. One of the groups suggested throwing the sticks on the table to see if they can magically see squares.
Then…we all signed up for Classkick. Ever since we started using Classkick – I have yet to have a class where 100% of the class followed directions. Block 5 was much better at following directions than Block 6. There has to be a better way on the teacher end to get the students signed up and logged in than the way we’re doing it. This is the portion of the class where my IT special skills get tested, and flipping back and forth between the different operating systems keeps me on my toes! It was also fun to discover in real time that the button for the adding image had changed, but modeling how to react to change for the class was also an important lesson. (We don’t freak out…we try to solve it first THEN freak out if we can’t after several different tries…then google it.)
Once everyone got signed up for Classkick – it was a much smoother class. Students got right on it and worked on their assignments due for the next class. It’s always fun the first few days while we’re trying to figure out what works for everyone. The major positive: students asking questions. I really like it when students ask clarifying questions!
Learning with Ms. Medrano 