25 percent

The end of the 1st quarter of the school year is upon us. My AP students are feeling it most acutely- some have several targets they haven't achieved proficiency on yet. They're signing up for re-assessments, and it looks like it's going to be a very busy week. The limit is one re-assessment a day, which can contain up to two targets. They have to submit their requests via my google docs form at least 24 hours in advance, which makes this whole she-bang reasonable. One particularly organized student submitted 3 different requests for next week, which was stunning at first, but at least I had the weekend to prepare.

People keep asking what I learned while I was in Argentina. They want to know what techniques I learned or what tricks the teachers shared with me. I feel like it's a let-down to say this, but when I think back about it, what I learned had more to do with how my actions can affect the class. I realize now that I'd become complacent, not in my methods or what I did, but in my expectations of students. In Argentina I saw students that were on a similar level as my own who were being pushed harder and challenged to go beyond what my own students were tackling. I realized that the limiting factor in my teaching wasn't my students' capabilities or work ethics, but rather my own ideas of what they could do.

So this year I've tried to push further. Not in a mean tortuous way, but in a hey-you-are-more-capable-than-you-think-and-I-know-you-can-do-this sort of way. One example was pretty minor, but it seems to be helping the students. When they write lab reports I've always had them include trend lines on their graphs. This year I've gone further- they need to modify the generic y=blabla*x + blerp equations to fit their own variables. For example, if they are changing air volume in a balloon and then measuring its airtime, the resulting equation should be something like time = (blabla seconds/pumps)*volume+blerp seconds. This seems to help reinforce that the equations are supposed to be modelling something physical; it's been easier to get them to make the connection between the equation of their equations and real world behavior at really big or really small values. This isn't anything new... I've expected my students to think about this type of stuff. It's just that few of them have. The relatively simple change in my expectations for their equations has produced the reflective behavior I wanted, though I didn't expect this to happen.

My students always choose their own lab topics and design their own experiments. This year we've seem some really neat stuff. One group chose to make a marshmallow gun, which is pretty neat. The cool thing is that they've gone down a different road than other groups who have tackled this topic in previous years. They've changed barrel length a little bit, but the big leap they made was to modify the scale of the gun. The original design was for mini-marshmallows, but they made new models to shoot regular-sized marshmallows and jumbo marshmallows. The air source they're using is still the same, so this led to an interesting discussion about scaling. Another neat thing was that the jumbo-sized marshmallows didn't fit perfectly in the barrel, so we had to wrap them in some wadding a la revolutionary war! Lots of layers to this one, but it's just one experiment out of roughly 20 that are running right now.

shopvac powered jumbo marshmallow gun

Another new wrinkle with my lab program is the reports themselves. I've used the same format for reports for the past 6 years with only minor changes. Each partner writes their own report, but they use different formats. One writes a technical report complete with abstract, and the other writes a popular report in a two-column format. I borrowed this technique from Larry Hiller in Buffalo, and I like it. Not just because it makes cheating much much harder, but also because it gets the students to think about their audiences. They can share graphs, tables, figures, etc., but the rest of the writing is their own. Ok, enough suspense (or rambling? hard to tell). The new wrinkle is that once students master the reports, they only have to submit a 1-page informal write-up that is graded on a sufficient/insufficient basis. The bar I set this year was a 90% on a formal report. I think I would make it >90% for future years, and maybe make them master both styles before they can switch to the informal reports. My students from last year who wrote ~8 formal reports in my course are slightly peeved, and rightfully so. I explained that I try to change things for the better each year, and that this is an experiment of sorts. I changed the AP C Physics course drastically this year, and I think it's way better than it used to be. But they don't have anything to compare it to, so they don't know how lucky they are. Speaking of which, this week they'll be completing a reflective activity about their performance thus far in my course. Anyone have any favorite questions they use to get kids thinking about their own work and efforts?

I have a few AP students who aren't nearly proficient on quite a few targets. I'm a little worried, but fingers are crossed that they'll pull it together before the end of the week. Nearly 25% of the year has passed, vacation season on the horizon... gotta make hay while the sun is shining!

Flaws, Solutions, and Ruminations

Wow, it has been way too long. I've been buried in work (mostly of my own creation), and this is the first time I've had a chance to come up for air. The other night I was leaving feedback for my students after their weekly assessment in class and I realized I was writing a lot. Mayhaps too much. Here is one entry:

Your graph of the backyard pool problem was pretty good. it put you in the right ballpark, but not quite close enough (the actual solution was 9 m). It was a reasonable graph, but you didn't show an algebraic solution to the problem, so I can't really tell how you're doing on this target. I get the sensation that the issue had to do with not having the equation you needed.... we need to be really comfortable with these equations. not just getting licensed to use them once, but knowing them well enough to be able to come up with them whenever we need them (or pull them out of our memories). If it was something else (like maybe the problem was intimidating), then I'd suggest some practice. Come see me sometime and we can chat about it.

The student who received this had an interesting issue- he had recently gotten a new iPhone and for some reason it was sending his texts and emails to his parents' computer rather than to his new phone (not sure how this happened). Well, mom got the updates from the BlueHarvest website saying that new comments were posted for him, and was astonished by the amount of text. I think that the word he used was actually "disturbed." Not sure if it's over the top or not, but it seems to have been a one-time thing, that particular night I had enough time to be able to geek out and write a ton, but that isn't normally the case.

So I'm still using SBG with my AP class. Some get it, others do not. One student said she definitely needs to come in for extra credit because she hasn't mastered many standards. I gave her a funny look, and this led to a new round of discussion regarding how I will calculate their grade at the end of the marking period. She wondered if getting less than mastery still earned her points on a target (it doesn't by the way, but it shows progress in the right direction). For the record, this is a conversation we've had before, but it had new urgency since it's about 2.5 weeks away. We also had a long discussion about what it means to be proficient in a skill and what should happen if they have an off day and don't do well on an assessment. I had been removing their proficiency if they bombed a standard on a new assessment that they'd already mastered- the point if it is to have the skills mastered, which means all the time, right? They argued that sometimes problems can be intimidating and hard to start. We went back and forth, their argument being that a single bad day shouldn't be cause for a drop in proficiency- maybe it should take two poor showings to drop back below proficiency. I'm not sure about this, but if we went to the two strikes model then I think I should add a caveat that if they do drop, they have to re-assess post-haste.

The whole discussion came up because there was a problem on an assessment I wrote that went something like:
Gwen and her little sister Natalia are hanging out in the back yard. It’s a hot day and they decide to race to the pool. Gwen decides that since Natalia is younger, she deserves a head start of 5 meters. After they count down “3, 2, 1, go,” Natalia runs straight to the pool at a speed of 1 m/s. Gwen starts off running at 3 m/s, but after two seconds slows down to a more sedate 1.5 m/s. A graph of velocity vs. time is shown below with the motion of both girls plotted.

a. Create a quantitative graph of position vs. time that shows the girls’ motion using the axes below.
b. How far away would the pool have to be for the girls to arrive there simultaneously? 

The other interesting factor is that I didn't give my students any equations. They all have to get "licensed" before I will let them use an equation- basically they have to be able to show me how they derived it. I borrowed this from Kelly (aside: this will definitely be the case for the kinematics equations, not sure about the rest of the course). Some students either remember the equations or drew a quick graph of position vs. time and derived it again, while others struggled. So... all the kids graphed the situation correctly. Partway through the assessment one student asked me if he could solve the problem graphically. I repeated his question so the whole class could hear it and then answered that a graphical solution would be acceptable, but that it wouldn't prove to me that he was proficient in the problem-solving target. I encouraged the kids to give it a shot, and one said, "well, why would I? I'm already proficient on this target, so why would I risk dropping that?" Ah the fatal flaw in my plan. I think there needs to be a new score for intentionally evading a target--> -1. In all seriousness, I should have given him a zero, which I use as meaning that the target hasn't been assessed. So his proficiency would have been history anyway. I hadn't done this in the past because sometimes the assessments I wrote were too long for our 38 minute periods, and it didn't seem fair to penalize kids for my mistake. However, this was the first question, so that excuse doesn't fly. As I write this I realize I've just solved my own dilemma. Maybe this dialogue will be useful for someone else, but at least it helped me just to write it down.

I've also been giving some thought to what other people do. Frank's SBG never removes proficiency once it's attained. Someone else (who I can;t find or remember right now, mea culpa) takes the average of all the scores to assess their performance on a standard, but weights the most recent so that it's 80% of the score. I don't particularly like this- it kicks out the idea that learning something well erases past mistakes.

Not sure about this... the students also argued that I need to tell them what standards I'm going to assess in advance so they know where to study. I find this idea repulsive, it seems like it would undermine the entire process. Has anyone else encountered this request from students?

Today I stumbled across one of the best visual explanations of the differences between traditional grading systems and SBG on Bowman Dickson's Blog:

SBG

Angry Birds with traditional grading

I really like it and want to share it with my students. This week we also took on the Red Bull Stratos Jump a la iModel iBlog - constant v for Regents, full analysis for AP. It was neat, and I appreciate the efforts of those who tabulated the data. I was planning to, but didn't get around to it, and was thrilled to find it already done.

This post turned out to be way longer than I expected. I've mentioned a lot of stuff here. I'd love to hear what others think, so if you have any thoughts please chime in. I'll close with a quote from a parent who emailed me about her daughter's performance in my AP class and time spent studying (or lack thereof) outside of class. We exchanged several emails and this stuck with me: 

"... came home very disgruntled about today’s assessment. I was quick to ask if she had done any of the practice from the website. She stormed upstairs and said, “We should just have HOMEWORK!”  I think she’ll be availing herself of those practices now." 

hearting my job

Last week I had a really good period with an exceptional group of students. It was so amazing that it made my entire day, even though the rest of the day wasn't all that great (except for lab, which I always love, and tacos at lunch). I wasn't even all that psyched about the activity beforehand, and it took a ton of time and effort and set that period back a day and a half behind the other periods. However, the grins were well worth it, and I can't wait to do it again.

We started the year with the polar bear game (aside: I learned this at a CIPT workshop years ago, but just did a quick search and found this blog entry. I use it to the same end, although I emphasize how me model physical behavior and then refine our models when they fail to make accurate predictions. I also can't say ice-hole without smirking or worrying that if I say it too quickly it will come out wrong. So I say polar bears around a hole in the ice). Next we we hit the circle lab, which was cool- this was my first year doing it. After that we went to the tried and true Modeling Instruction pendulum. After finishing it and looking at the results, this particular section wasn't convinced and thought that with a larger pendulum we might see results with different bob masses or amplitudes. They were borderline obsessed with figuring this out, and kept asking me how we were going to do it. We had a good discussion about different possibilities and how they could run such an experiment, and I promised to look into using either the gym or the auditorium.

It didn't work out for us to use the gym, so the auditorium it was. I spent one morning scoping out different spots and finally found a place I liked that was directly below the catwalk. I built a seat in the shop one day, and then went in early on the day of the experiment to rig up the pendulum using my climbing gear. The effective length of the rope was somewhere around 30 feet, but since it was constant the students decided that they didn't need to waste time measuring it. We started by figuring out which students were interested in being bobs, and then we chose the order randomly. We used a video camera to capture footage to measure period more accurately with stopwatches, though in hindsight I should have either moved the camera further away or shot high speed video. They measured the mass of each student using a bathroom scale and then they swung back and forth a few times, all starting from the same point.

After we finished changing the mass, we talked about how to change amplitude. I wanted to use a bowling ball, but they decided a person would be more exciting. I responded that it wouldn't be fair to choose just one of them for such an honor, and then they decided that I should do it. I reluctantly agreed, more because I wasn't sure how much the trajectory would change on the longer trials. As the earth rotates the path of a pendulum appears to rotate, though in actuality it's the room that is spinning, not the pendulum. In this case it was worrisome because we were swinging down an aisle whose entrance was bordered by concrete block walls.

To paraphrase one student, "I had fun not only doing the experiment and figuring out if mass made a difference, but also watching you [me]. Your face would change from excited as you swung forward to terrified as you swung back toward the walls. it was priceless." The shot above shows the excited portion of the swing. I never hit the walls, in fact I don't even think I cam close.

We spent a whole period conducting the experiment. Afterwards I tracked all of the students' motion using LoggerPro and figured out the period for each one. The next day in class we watched one of the videos and then I showed them how to track points and determine out period. They were a little bit daunted by the idea of doing that for each video, and I think most were relieved when I explained that I'd already done it (side note: most all of them will do this themselves at some point in the year, so it wasn't a big loss that they didn't all do it). Here is a graph of the data they collected:

I'm not the first person to use a human pendulum, my grandmother showed me an article about a professor at a local college doing the same thing in his lecture. It's a lot of work, but I would heartily recommend it for anyone who is interested. since I have the webbing all set, next year it should be a snap to rig, so long as I don't undo the knots for something else.

Onto other topics... I've been putting together some handouts for kids to use during class as we work through examples. I have had issues with Word and images in the past and have switched to LaTeX. It works well, though it took me a little bit of troubleshooting to get images to show up where I wanted them. I'm going to include a smattering of Context-Rich Problems which I'm hoping to have the kids tackle using the GOAL problem solving technique (adapted as IDEA by colleagues in South America, see here). I also have some Goal-less problems lined up, and of course ranking tasks, can't wait to see how they work.

I had my first student come in for a re-assessment on Friday afternoon. Last year he was always been one to argue about his scores and whether he should have received more points on a problem. He's also been quick to point how that since I count a 4 as proficient on my grading scale, it's basically the same as a 5. The distinction that a 5 shows perfect command of the material while a 4 is just ok seems to be wasted on him. So anyway, I wasn't sure how the re-assessment would go, especially since the request he submitted using my google form wasn't the most reflective I've ever seen (he explained that he looked over his "nots", for one). He took the re-assessment and asked me to tell him how he did. I was looking at it and trying to figure how where he went wrong when he spoke up and said that he was pretty sure that he made a mistake at a certain part. I agreed, and we talked about what could have been done better. He left without arguing and that was that. If this is the effect that SBG can have, I'm all in!

Welcome!

Greetings! Maybe you're one of the loyal Ansarino in Argentina followers from the blog I kept during my participation in the Fulbright DAT program, maybe not. Either way, I am thrilled that you found your way to this site.

 My hope is to be able to use this blog to give back to the online teaching community. I don't necessarily mean those who deliver teach science and math from a distance, but rather the dedicated group of teachers who share their experiences (both good and bad) in the hope that others can improve their own teaching, or at least start a discussion to that end!

This year I'm trying some new techniques, not the least of which is Standards-Based Grading. I borrowed ideas from lots of other bloggers.... Shawn (here too), Kate, Kelly (again here and here), Frank, Brian, Jason, etc. To be honest, I started looking into SBG last winter. I read a lot and finally ended up with something that I think will work for both my students and me. Without the resources these folks took the time to share I would be left grading as I always have and hating it, mostly because all that the students worry about is their test scores rather than understanding the material I want them to learn.

I'm rolling this out with my AP Physics students with the help of BlueHarvest. Students are going to have an assessment every Wednesday. I think... we're still discussing this as a class. Every "C" day (we have a 6-day cycle, A-F days, lab meets twice every cycle, periods are 38 minutes long) the students will have either one or two periods to work on their independent experiments. These are probably the highlight of my class. Anyway, I decided to go with a grading scale from 0-5. My syllabus explains a lot of it in more depth. You can see it and a rough draft of my learning targets (aka standards) here: AP Physics homepage.

I am not sure if the kids have bought into it yet. When I was explaining it I told the kids that theirs is a science class which inherently involves experiments. This is just another experiment, and as the class progresses it is very likely that my grading scheme and practices will evolve. I think that they interpreted this as "if we ignore it, he will abandon this crazy notion and go back to the way things have always been." I hope that this doesn't happen and that they start to buy into it. I created a practice standard for students to see the different types of feedback they can receive on Blue Harvest. this started some neat conversations, and I finally got all the kids to change their profile pictures. Well, one simply downloaded the default image, mirrored it 180 degrees, and uploaded it again. it's a different image. Another had issues trying to get a file small enough. He sent me feedback on other standards (which I haven't even assessed yet) to show he can log in. I changed his profile picture for him, though I gave him a picture of a truck, and he loves Cadillacs. I am hoping that it pushes him to change it himself. p.s. he just changed it to a basketball player.


Regents Physics will still be graded using the old system. I could have gone whole-hog, but my time is limited this year as never before, and I didn't want to get in over my head. I consoled myself that if SBG goes really well I can always adopt it partway through the year. The only big change I made is that I gave kids an out for their formal lab reports. I've always struggled requiring them anyway. The out is that once they've mastered the skill of writing them, they no longer have to do them, just an informal writeup. I think it will make them try harder, I just hope they don't give up when they shoot for the bar I set and fail the first time around.