Day 35 – Curricular Competencies in Math

Math 8 – In our group work today I asked students to focus on two particular competencies:

• I can ask others for explanations
• I can contribute to a group task

I chose these competencies for two reasons. First, I know that some students were really struggling with the Painted Cubes problem and were backing out of their groups, trying to meld into the background. I’m trying to make sure that students are active in asking their peers for explanations. Secondly, some students will have a very hard time coming up with generalizations in problems like Painted Cubes. The idea is that even if a student cannot come up with the final solution, they’re is always something they can contribute. Maybe it’s an idea, a calculation, whatever.

 

Day 25 – Quiz Reflection

Physics 11 – Students had their Constant Velocity quizzes returned. I then asked them to review their quizzes and fill out the above reflection sheet.  The goal of the sheet would be to help them improve on the learning objective.

I then had the students try to finish generating their velocity-time graphs using tangents from their position-time curves.  It was a lot of heavy lifting and a slow process. I hope that it is a useful exercise. My co-worker believes that it is, and so does Modeling Instruction.

Day 25 – Self Assessment for Labs

Science 8 – After writing down their lab reports, for which I gave the students loose instructions, I handed out a completed lab report that I wrote. I then asked the students to compare their labs with mine.  They had to compare and contrast their lab with mine and then describe two things they did well and two things that they could improve upon. I really like this activity because:

• they have to think about their lab reports, rather than file away a marked report
• they have to  explicitly describe areas where they can improve
• I don’t have to spend an hour per class marking for no real benefit