Today was Day 1 of 4 of the Frosh Retreat. For Block 5, I had 6 students present for class, and everyone else was rostered to be at the retreat. I don’t actually know if anyone was absent, but I expected them to be at the retreat. Block 6 – everyone was present. This 4-day retreat makes lesson planning difficult because it’s also at the end of the grading period. It’s not ideal that the retreat happens at this time. Perhaps, it would be better at the beginning of the next grading period as opposed to the end of the grading period.
Today’s goal was to have students practice calculating next-x, current-x, velocity, or delta-t given the others. Mrs. Freudenberg’s preference is to isolate the variable given x = x0 + (velocity * delta-t). I like to plug all the numbers in THEN isolate the variable. I will allow the students to choose a method they like better. I personally do not like the isolating the variable given the equation first. HOWEVER, Mrs. Freudenberg does teach AP Physics, so perhaps her method translates to making it easy once students reach AP Physics.
In the past, students found this day to be easy and the application of all that we’ve learned in Pyret and Physics. Today, we found out that the students found this to be the peak of their frustration (AS A GROUP). There were individuals who found this to be easy, but as a group, students expressed their frustration at not finding this easy at the first go.
I will need to make some videos this week to help the students understand this better.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 