Hestenes Part 2

Again, I am confronted with the fact that simplifying a concept leads to confusion for students. Saying that a force is simply a push or a pull implies that forces must be active. Then, students have great difficulty understanding the normal force because they can't imagine a table applying an active force.

Adams

It is so important to start the year off right! Besides the fact that so many classes start the first day with the same-old, same-old reading of the syllabus, we want our students to be comfortable and expect active engagement in our classes.

Arons 3.1-3.12

SOCS-P: So many things to talk about with this reading that I refuse to limit myself to 30 words. I also am a list-maker, so I will make my observations/reflections in list form.

A theme that we see over and over in our readings is that teachers fail to realize that it took humanity hundreds if not thousands of years to develop some of the concepts that we ask our students to understand, yet teachers expect students to grasp these ideas within one class period. It is unfortunately mean and naive to call students' pre-Newtonian ideas "misconceptions" but rather acknowledge that their ideas are reasonable within their span of experiences. It is our job, therefore, to provide them with a new set of experiences and contradictions of their pre-Newtonian ideas to replace them with Newtonian concepts. This takes many, many experiences over a long span of time.

I was struck by the repeated description of the importance of precise language. In my classroom this year, I imposed the rule that students and myself cannot use words that we haven't defined as a class. I only did this because my cooperating teacher did this and I didn't think anything of it except that we need to have a common language. I did not realize how vital this is! I don't want my students to use words they have already assigned a preconception to in the incorrect context. If they use this term incorrectly from the start, I can do as many awesome, conflicting activities that I want, but students conceptions will not change. Instead, we should define a concept with a series of different representations before we assign the name to it. That way, students have many anchors with which to ground their understanding.

There also seems to be an overarching theme that students don't understand what I might think of as simple concepts quickly. I need to make these ideas explicit when teaching. Most students can get the idea of superposition of forces, etc. if I give them time with concrete examples that connect to previous and future experiences.

The concept that I most wanted to blog about, however, is differentiated instruction. I think the answer to whether or not modeling is a differentiated method is easy:

"If one wishes to lead the majority, rather than a small minority, of students to understanding the law of inertia, one must accept the necessity of providing a wide array of experiences, both hands-on and hypothetical, in which students make their own errors, encounter the resulting contradictions and forced by these errors and contradictions, revise their preconceptions. Such experience cannot be provided and mastery developed, however, in one short remedial session. The ideas and initial experiences should be introduced while development of the subject matter is continued without waiting for full mastery on first encounter. One then helps cultivate mastery and understanding through spiralling back to qualitative application of the law of inertia in increasingly rich and sophisticated physical situations as the study of the science continues." (page 70)

In other words, I think that by providing students with many ways to access the ideas and giving them the time and the opportunities to understand the concepts, we are differentiating.

Last, but certainly not least: I am TOTALLY going to use dry ice in my classroom next year. I LOVE playing with dry ice and the sequence of questions listed in the reading are really fruitful.

"A modeling method for high school physics instruction"

SOCS-P: I have to say that I am surprised that the data supplied in the article does not support general constructivist inquiry methods in physics classes. That is how I was taught to teach and I believe that it can be effective. Not that I haven't bought into the modeling method! I simply think that modeling is a more effective, more refined way to do constructivist teaching.

Unit 1: Normal forces (Camp and Clement)

SOCS-I: I think that perhaps I am skeptical because I love the modeling materials so much, but I find it difficult to see my own students making the conceptual leaps between the different demonstrations illustrated in this unit. I really think my students need to be doing their own investigations. I of course have no alternative for dealing with the normal force misconception, but I would like to make this lesson more interactive.

Minstrell

SOCS-C: I love the sequence for this lesson. I can really imagine using these demonstrations to facilitate a great discussion in my classroom. I expect, however, that what we have in store for us tomorrow morning in the workshop may be better. :)

Arons 2.8-2.19

SOCS-C: Another reason we should integrate the history of science into our science classrooms from Arons. Perhaps classes could discuss the methods/thinking of Galileo to glean modern science practices. Maybe in future years, I will have my advanced classes analyze "A Discourse of Two Sciences" for scientific thought/phenomena.