The beginning of the velocity unit has always been a bit hairy. This is when the “true” modeling part of teaching comes out. I ask: “is the buggy moving?” In the past, it has become a controversial question and students leave the room wondering if it really is or isn’t. This year, the students were able to move on to prove whether or not it’s moving.
As part of the proof, students mark their receipt tape every time they hear a tick (which is a metronome playing at 30 bpm). In the past, I’ve let the metronome play until the lab is over. This year, we did each trial together. I asked students to pick their starting point and a marker color, and then mark their receipt tape. Then, I would stop it, ask them to recollect themselves, and we would start again. This happened for each of the trials. Most of the groups were able to keep up. A couple groups realized they were not doing what they were supposed to do and eventually caught up.
I asked the students to write down the exact position of their markings on their receipt tape. In my mind, all the group members would be working on this since multiple meter sticks and things were provided. What ended up happening for most groups is that one person was doing this part and the other two were socializing. This is the part that took the longest or had the most errors. Even though I added a couple photos of football players photographed either in their starting formation or mid-play on the 30 yard line, some groups still managed to record the distance traveled instead of position. Though, there were MUCH less groups than in the years prior. Another error I didn’t anticipate was calculating the average position at each tick. There were a couple groups that missed a step in calculating the average. For the most part, lots of groups had great data.
The discussion part didn’t happen very well since we had 5 or 10 minutes left in class. I think that we did enough so that they could complete the homework successfully.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 