Constant Velocity with Computational Modeling

 I spent 19 class days on this unit, far more than I ever have or even ever imagined having to. I know part of it is that I am learning the computational part along with them. I don't feel like I am clear on what the end goal is so that is something I will need to work on.

We had the test yesterday. I got through about six of them before I had to stop. It's hard to grade through tears. They were awful. I really need to go back and reteach some of this, but with only twenty days left in the trimester, I have no idea how I am going to get through the next couple of units in time. 

I am concerned that so much time is spent focusing on the coding part that I am missing the forest for the trees. I can see the connection between the functions and the motions, but if it is fuzzy for me, who knows what to look for, I can totally believe that it is invisible for my kids.

Colliding Buggies with My Freshmen

Today was a weird one to observe. 

Today we started wrapping up Constant Velocity with the Colliding Buggies Lab. Kids were given the problem and a slightly structured page to record their thinking and progress. We have been working through some problems with where buggies would meet on paper and in Pyret, and we had done the Buggy Lab at the beginning of the unit, so there was a lot of background for them to pull from.

First hour was off to a slow start, but that is not unusual. They aren't quite awake yet. It's pretty quiet, and getting them talking can be rather tedious (and at times, disheartening). Once they get going, they tend to do well. Every group eventually figured out a plan and was able to get enough data to start on solving the problem.

Second hour came in and when I gave them the problem a thousand questions rang through the air. All of them were along the lines of "how do we do this?". Now, second hour is packed with what you would call the "smart" kids. They are chasing A's, which is fine. It just seems to show in projects like this where there is more than one way to find the solution. Every group this hour ended up getting the data they needed, but didn't get much further.

My fifth hour is rough. Nearly all of my IEP and 504 kids are in that hour, so I am constantly on the move from one group to the next keeping them on task. After introducing the lab, they took off. It was so much fun to watch. There was some redirecting and they were as rowdy as they normally are, but every group came up with a plan right away. Everyone had data at the end of the day and most even worked out where their prediction was going to be. 

I'm really excited to see how it all ends up on Monday, which is something I have not said in a LONG time!