Modeling Unit 1

As I noted at the top of my “modeling” page, I’m going to go back and reorganize my blog posts.  I’ve found that organizing by the day of the workshop isn’t very effective.  I plan to try to go back and organize the posts based on the Unit in the modeling cycle.  So, here’s Unit 1 (with the preliminary stuff of the workshop added in):

I’m blogging about my experience at the FIU Modeling Workshop.  Much of this is for me, so that I can remember my experience.  However, maybe this will help someone else to come over to the Modeling Method.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, so I might as well state it here, I currently teach Standard, Honors, and AP-B Physics.  I’ve been using the CPO Program, which is a hands-on program.  To me, it’s biggest downfall is that the labs, although well constructed, are cookbook labs.  The students can get caught up in the procedure, and miss the concept.  After joining twitter, I’ve come across several teachers that use the Modeling Method, and have become more and more interested.  Which brings me back to the point of this post, my experience on the first day.  However, before I get into that, I would make the following claim, if this interests you, please go to the workshop, don’t just rely on me.  Even after only one day I can tell that my recount will mean nothing for you without you attending.

Day 1:
We started the day with our leaders introducing themselves (Jon Anderson and Chris Doscher).  They quickly led us through a great introductory activity, that I might very well use with my students.  We each had to come up with 2 truths and 1 lie about our self, and the other people in our small group had to try to determine which is the lie.  After that, each person in the group had to introduce another member from the group to the entire cohort.  To me, it was a fun way to break the ice.

After taking the Force Concept Inventory test, we then got our first taste of whiteboarding.  We were asked to answer the following 3 questions as a group:
1. What are your greatest content-related teaching challenges?
2. What are your greatest instructional teaching challenges?
3. What are your goals for this workshop?

Here are the whiteboards:

Unit 1: Scientific Thinking
After breaking for lunch, we began our first experiment, a Pendulum Experiment.

In walking us through the experience of the lab, we were given a few questions and comments after we completed the task.  (For the sake of brevity, I’ll omit our responses to the questions).

Jon set up a simple pendulum and then wrote the following questions in succession:

What do you observe?
(side note, Brian W. Frank  recommended asking “what do you notice,” rather than “what do you observe.” Here’s why)
• Jon mentioned to try to not give any comments/facial gestures, just write.
• Ask if you need to rephrase for fewer words
What can you measure?
• Don’t comment until at the end.
• Do you need to pare down the list, do to lack of equipment?
• Are any measurements redundant, if so discuss with the class.
What can you manipulate to change the time?
• Edit down after complete based on equipment present
State purpose of lab for students:
To determine the mathematical and graphical relationships that exist between time, length, mass, and angle of release of a simple pendulum.
(Jon told us that the bold part represents the beginning phrase for basically all the lab objectives)

Before assigning the different types of relationships to different groups, Jon told us two important “rules” for labs:
1. Fair Test: manipulate only one variable at a time
2. 8×10 rule: collect at least 8 data points separated by at least a factor of 10
After collecting the data, they then introduced the group to LoggerPro, to analyze the data. We used LoggerPro to analyze our results and then put them on whiteboards to share with the other groups.

During this time, my small group discussed some of the strength and weaknesses with excel vs LoggerPro.  Namely, to us LoggerPro can analyze the data faster, but excel integrates with word docs a little easier.  (We could easily be wrong on this.)

This is where we ended the first day and began the next byfinishing up the “Board Meeting” with the groups that studied length vs period.  For physics teachers, this is obviously the group that was able to show an actual correlation.  One of the most interesting parts of the discussion, to me, was when Jon and Chris recommended not worrying about linearization yet.  They told us to now worry about that battle, as it will come up as you move into the next phase of the cycle.  Just let the kids use LoggerPro to get the mathematical relationship.  They did recommend spending some time to discuss whether or not the data should go through the origin.  In the course of that discussion then mentioned what they called the “5% Rule” which basically states that if the y-intercept is less than 5% of the biggest measured value in the data for the y axis, assume that it goes through the origin.After we finished that discussion, we then moved into the next phase of the modeling cycle in which we worked on linearizing data using LoggerPro.  The worksheethad 6 data sets (we had version 3 of this worksheet, I’ll add that link if I find it), and we had to plot the data and determine how to manipulate the data to create a linear graph that went through the origin.  Jon and Chris mention that they only used the first four problems (which I think are the 4 in version 2) with their classes as they have found that they are sufficient to get the students acclimated to the process. Jon and Chris did recommend to have the students write the regressed equation rather than the proportion shown (ie: equation with slope and y-intercept, not y is proportional to $\frac{1}{x}$).After we had linearized the data, each group was assigned a different problem to put on a whiteboard to share with the cohort.  Again, we were able to get a greater feel for how the whiteboarding process works, and able to ask questions as to how to moderate, when to step in and when to let the conversation go.