I’ve always wanted to build a bed of nails, especially since I started teaching physics. Now I’ve done it.
An “open book test” means students are allowed to use their books, and an “open notes” test means they’re allowed to use their notes. I’ve become fond of “open friend” quizzes. My students took one today. Continue reading
Today I did one of my favorite demos for my classes. The demo is convincing visual evidence that forming intermolecular bonds releases energy.
One of the reasons that the first few years of teaching are much harder than later years is because teachers basically start out with nothing. Ideas and lessons come from other experienced teachers, but teachers have to try the lessons and worksheets, see how they work, and then edit them a couple of times. After a couple of rounds of edits, the lessons are fairly robust, and most of the substantive changes have already happened.
During Christmas vacation, I was talking with my eleven-year-old daughter about school. She loves math (as do I). I asked her about her experience with word problems, knowing that most of my students struggle with them. She said that they weren’t too bad. Her Algebra 1 teacher assigns her class to both write and solve word problems on a fairly regular basis.
The idea of assigning students to write word problems was new to me, and it sounded like a promising idea. Continue reading
Last Friday, a colleague asked me to watch her homeroom for a few minutes. One of the girls in the homeroom was fixing her hair and fretting about a couple of hairs that didn’t want to behave. I commented that people don’t look that closely at other people, and that she was most likely the only person who was going to notice her hair on that level of detail.
She remained unconvinced, so I told her to look away and asked her to tell me which side my hair is parted on. She replied defensively, “I was looking at you, not your hair… oh… um… yeah.”
One of the things I have the hardest time watching at school is when a teacher or administrator starts challenging a student over some infraction, and the student doesn’t immediately capitulate. Continue reading
Today two groups of students successfully dropped raw eggs onto my head from the roof of the school as I walked underneath. Last week another group of students did the same thing. Continue reading
One of the things I appreciate about this year’s students is the way they take charge of their own learning. Continue reading
Most teenagers are fragile. Their self-image is often built on a shaky foundation and altogether too often hinges on things their friends, parents, teachers, and other might say by chance. Continue reading
