Mariflor Medrano

Pace Car

I was very nervous to start Pace Car. When Mrs. F and I originally learned to do this activity, I believe some tears ensued. I did warn my students that tears may fall during this learning exercise, and it might be me (again) or them (maybe again?), but that’s part of the learning struggle forContinue reading “Pace Car”

Day 30: Quiz and turning our motion maps

We’re about 10 days out from taking the final, and we’re just now taking the first quiz for velocity. During the next-x discussion, a lot of the students LOOKED like they were paying attention. There were lots of copying down whatever was being written down on the board. However, today, after looking at the quizzesContinue reading “Day 30: Quiz and turning our motion maps”

Buggy Lab & Simulated Motion

Started Unit 2 with a lot of grief. This year, Unit 1 ended with a lot of…fireworks. The Physics team reworked the Summative that we had created during the Zoom school days. It turned out that it didn’t necessarily work with our 9th graders this year. We’re rethinking the Summative, and instead of a project,Continue reading “Buggy Lab & Simulated Motion”

Day 11: Game Day and Flag Drawings

Game Day: System Schemas & State Diagrams Since I gave my test a day later than the other teachers, I had to create my own problems and make it just different enough. Introducing the conditions earlier caused some focus to be diverted away from the drawing system schemas and state diagrams. Students focused on weirdContinue reading “Day 11: Game Day and Flag Drawings”

Days 9 & 10: Whiteboarding System Schema & State Diagram

For the sake of time, I wanted to skip this whiteboarding session. During the #cmpfb sessions, they could not stop emphasizing how important this session was. So naturally, I thought it’d be a good one to skip. After talking it over with Mrs. F., it was determined that I should not skip this board meeting.Continue reading “Days 9 & 10: Whiteboarding System Schema & State Diagram”

Days 7 & 8: System Schema and State Diagrams

Day 7: Flipbooks Today, we finally go the chance to introduce the Physicists of 406. I normally like to do this on Day 2 or Day 3, with Day 1 being a 45-minute period. I had no idea that missing that normal Day 1 would throw me off my timing so bad. Regardless, students filledContinue reading “Days 7 & 8: System Schema and State Diagrams”

Days 5-6 Observation Stations continues

I really should have lumped Days 4-6 together since it covers Observation Stations, but it looks like I was feeling particularly ambitious about posting each day. Day 5: Progress Check + Presentations Since it was our first year last year rolling out the Computational Modeling- Physics First #cmpfb curriculum, it was not as intuitive forContinue reading “Days 5-6 Observation Stations continues”

Day 4- Observation Stations Part 1

Since we ran out of time last class, we started the class by completing Pyret WS1. This is the worksheet where they type out a series of expressions in the Interactions Side of the editor. We came up with some things that we noticed after completing the exercise. Each block noticed slightly different things. BecauseContinue reading “Day 4- Observation Stations Part 1”

Day 3- PEMDAS is “wrong”

Today, students were introduced to why PEMDAS is “wrong.” First, we went through a couple of viral math problems in class. I forgot to include these in my slides, so I picked a couple from Google and forgot to actually work it out before showing students. We had some fun with these problems and thereContinue reading “Day 3- PEMDAS is “wrong””

Day 2- Write It, Do It

For this class, I had the opportunity to use my performing arts skills! Students were given one of three images. Essentially, all three images had a green triangle on top of a blue square with a red circle next to it. All three pictures had some sort of variation so that they were different enough.Continue reading “Day 2- Write It, Do It”