On Friday, I was so pleased to be able to return to one of my favorite days of the year, High-Interest Day at Brookfield Elementary School. This is a day where I have been able to bring the concepts of physics to k-5 graders. You may be asking yourself, "Elementary students doing physics?" YES! Not just experimenting, but understanding the concepts behind the physics of electricity and sound. This is a very special day I have had the opportunity to be involved in since 2017. So, how are we able to bring the concepts of electricity and sound traditionally taught to high school 11th and 12th graders to the elementary level? There are a few keys 1) make it a hands-on experience 2) remove the mathematical calculations and make it practical. In the past, I had the luck of bringing a handful of my physics students with me to guide the elementary students through the concepts that they had learned over the course of the year. But in my new role as a Teaching and Learning Speciali
Over the past 4 years I’ve been experimenting with options for student summative assessments related to unit outcomes. It’s been going quite well for the most part, but I’m trying something a little bit different this time to help with some of the logistics. I am always amazed at the options that I fail to explore in some of the tech tools I am using. But like every good tool it doesn’t make sense to use these features until you have a purpose beyond novelty. I currently teach 3 blocks of physics with 80 students total. My first block is co-taught and ⅓ of our students have an identified learning disability. We are intentional about the supports we provide to learners with IEPS, but also the entire population in terms of strengths and challenges. To address this, we moved away from using Google Docs as templates to Google Slides . I have been using Doctopus for ages to distribute the same templates to all learners and it has been working wonderfully. (FYI we use an LMS the