Mariflor Medrano

CS with Sheena Vaidyanathan

Today’s Professional Development was extremely successful at KCI at Foothill College. I learned some clear and helpful applications in teaching the “Hacking” portion of the Making, Hacking, & Tinkering class. We’re not quite at hacking stage yet, but hopefully, we can be. I relearned some important coding language protocols and how to think about programming.Continue reading “CS with Sheena Vaidyanathan”

Force of Gravity Lab- Day 26-28

Data Collection On Day 26, I went over with students how they were going to collect data. First, they needed to know the forces acting on the mass. We drew interaction and force diagrams on whiteboards, that the students ended up putting into their document. Then they were to place to the masses on theContinue reading “Force of Gravity Lab- Day 26-28”

Day 25- Flipgrid Forces + Diagrams

I wanted to hear student voices that don’t normally speak up in class to see if they really truly understand the concepts that we’re covering. The Forces unit usually is a make or break for the freshmen for the rest of the year. Few students can pull it together after Christmas vacation to improve onContinue reading “Day 25- Flipgrid Forces + Diagrams”

Day 24 Physics- LeBron defies gravity

Today, we had our Types of Forces discussion. I went over the slides that the wonderful Mrs. F created before I came to SHC about the types of forces we will use in class. I like this discussion because it allows students to DO some of the information we share. They get to actually experienceContinue reading “Day 24 Physics- LeBron defies gravity”

Day 23- Test and Forces

Last year, my colleage, Mrs. Freudenberg, did an activity with the students using materials and ideas from Kelly O’Shea (@kellyoshea)and Brian Frank (@brianwfrank). Unfortunately, I had a family emergency to take care of, so I don’t even have the memory of doing this activity. With it being my first time, there were a bunch of questions thatContinue reading “Day 23- Test and Forces”

Day 22- MHT Humble Pie

Ms. Medrano eats a serving of humble pie.

Day 21- It’s Friday!

Today, we whiteboarded some of the homework. I’m really glad we did, because although the students were able to regurgitate some information, there were some heavy misconceptions. Misconception #1 Thought: The position is decreasing as the velocity is decreasing. The object is not accelerating because it is slowing down. Although the position is decreasing, it isContinue reading “Day 21- It’s Friday!”

Day 17- Is it speeding up?

Today, we covered one of the most difficult labs this semester: Is it speeding up? Last year, or maybe every year, we think it’s really difficult. I opened up one of the labs from last year, and it looked really good. So this year, I think it’s going to go much quicker with some of theContinue reading “Day 17- Is it speeding up?”

Day 17- Building continued

Day 1 of Building- Students mainly counted their LEGO pieces. The reason we do this is so that students know how many pieces they have and have discussions of how they can use certain pieces that didn’t initially show up in their Plan phase. This is one of the videos created by the students toContinue reading “Day 17- Building continued”

Day 16- Acceleration Intro

Whoa! I’m not a fan of the class days where I have to do a lot of talking and explaining. The students get bored, everyone gets restless staying in their seats. The discussion was totally worth it. First, we asked the students to draw something fast and slow. We got a lot of fast raceContinue reading “Day 16- Acceleration Intro”