It's a Sunday of a three day weekend and I should be procrastinating, but I have so much school shit on my to do list that I decided to use this fine, warm afternoon to do a little grading. I've been working on projectiles with my kids. First time I've actually taught this topic so it's been fun and challenging, both qualities that I enjoy. Over the past 8 days we have done several labs observing projectiles in motion, watched mythbusters, some youtube clips and practiced our new knowledge with a series of stations that assessed both the math skills and the theory behind projectile motion (of course 2-D motion, these are freshman). One of the main skills is knowing that if you ignore air resistance, a projectile launched, and a projectile dropped from the same height will hit the ground at the same time. No shit. Jaime and Adam did the bullet fired vs. bullet dropped mythbusters and it's freaking awesome. So over the 8 days, we've done some cool crap.
Friday I gave a little quiz to see how the kids were coming along... Sounds like a good teacher idea, until you think about who is going to grade all those little quizzes. I use the grading strategy of grading all 100 page ones, and then move on to page twos and so on... I know what I'm looking for so I am usually a quick grader and can zip past the answers in no time. And believe me, it gets boring. Reading the 100th same response or at least similar response. Yes, we did a penny lab. We launched a penny (horizontally) off a table and dropped a penny simultaneously and low and behold they land at the same time. Most of my kids remembered every detail from this lab. I even used my phone to recored a video from each class and show it as a follow up. Yup, the projectiles fall at the same time. So, of course, this is a concept I want to assess. Having doubts? Watch this.
In an analysis question the kids had to explain how they knew what they knew with an example from class. Here's one of the responses...
Friday I gave a little quiz to see how the kids were coming along... Sounds like a good teacher idea, until you think about who is going to grade all those little quizzes. I use the grading strategy of grading all 100 page ones, and then move on to page twos and so on... I know what I'm looking for so I am usually a quick grader and can zip past the answers in no time. And believe me, it gets boring. Reading the 100th same response or at least similar response. Yes, we did a penny lab. We launched a penny (horizontally) off a table and dropped a penny simultaneously and low and behold they land at the same time. Most of my kids remembered every detail from this lab. I even used my phone to recored a video from each class and show it as a follow up. Yup, the projectiles fall at the same time. So, of course, this is a concept I want to assess. Having doubts? Watch this.
In an analysis question the kids had to explain how they knew what they knew with an example from class. Here's one of the responses...
I laughed for 3 minutes, hysterically and have continued to smile and giggle now 3 hours later. Phonics at work, I suppose. This is a 9th grader in their second semester of the year. He's probably close to 15 by now. It's funny as shit and sad as shit at the same time. The thing about my job is that if I don't laugh, I'll cry. I'm just glad that phonetically pennies is penis.
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