#MERIT18 – Page 3 – Learning with Ms. Medrano

2019-20 School Year Resolutions

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎉 This year, I’m teaching THREE classes: Physics, Making Hacking & Tinkering (MHT), and AP Computer Science Principles (APCSP). I’m looking forward to learning about teaching a new course. The last couple of years, teaching MHT rekindled my joy for programming. I remember enjoying the coding classes during high school and undergrad. I thoughtContinue reading “2019-20 School Year Resolutions”

Physics Camp Days 1-5

Whew! What a week! We learned so much about each other and Physics. The campers were excited about what the day would bring them. I wish I had done a better job of writing about what we did, but hope you enjoy the day’s recap videos! Here are all the videos! [Day 5- Coming soon…]Continue reading “Physics Camp Days 1-5”

Physics Camp: Things that Crash!

Today, I used a lot of material from Mrs. Freudenberg’s friend, Griff Jones, who is also a modeler. His IIHS-HLDI website has a lot of fun lesson plans for Physics and Biology. (Note to self: This might be a really great entry point for social justice learning in Physics…not sure how yet, but could be…) I created a littleContinue reading “Physics Camp: Things that Crash!”

Physics Summer Camp- Things that Go!

I’m 3-4 years removed from middle school, and today, I was reminded of life before high school. Middle school students are energetic, creative, and curious about everything around them. Our Human Bingo card was a little challenging. I tried to make it as specific as possible to our local culture, and for it to takeContinue reading “Physics Summer Camp- Things that Go!”

Day 2 @CUE19

Shifting Math Culture Admittedly, I only attended this session because I was fangirling over @edcampOSjr stickers. Tech + hip-hop, what’s not to love? After the session, I’m realizing that the entire school culture is developed for learners to dislike math and critical thinking. There aren’t many opportunities for students to get up, walk around, takeContinue reading “Day 2 @CUE19”

Pi Day @Spring Cue 2019

Registration #CUE19 is going green! There wasn’t a lot of paper involved (thank goodness!). I really like the Sched app used to keep track of all the sessions I’m interested in. I also thought it worked much better than whatever NSTA was using last year. I’m sure that the use of an app for conferencesContinue reading “Pi Day @Spring Cue 2019”

Tech PD

Presented this slideshow at a PD for elementary school in San Leandro. This was so much fun putting this information together. I really enjoyed showing teachers how to use Scratch in their classroom. After leaving the site, it made me realize that this should have been a workshop series and not an hour long session.

Code to Circuitry unlocked

Saturday Teachers Spent most of my Saturday with a bunch of other passionate educators at the East Bay CUE STEM Symposium in Pleasant Hill. Although it is a required #MERIT18 attendance, I’m really glad that my membership with #MERIT18 has opened my world to a new PLN. Raspberry Pi & Python There were many sessionsContinue reading “Code to Circuitry unlocked”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It has been challenging trying to teach entry level coding to a group of seniors who are at varying levels of coding. Last year, we (Making, Hacking, and Tinkering teachers) decided to create a paper and pen quiz. It was a terrible idea with good intentions. First of all, students weren’t used to handwriting codeContinue reading “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Momentum-Impulse Unit

My first year of teaching Physics, we did not include momentum-impulse. Second year Physics, we briefly went through impulse quickly. This year, we had an actual unit and went through it. The wonderful Mrs. F brilliantly created some templates for students to work through some of these word problems. When I was in high school learning Physics,Continue reading “Momentum-Impulse Unit”