Mo Physics Mo Problems

As a part of my educational philosophy, I am trying to incorporate opportunities to explicitly practice and assess critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity within my classroom.   But, there has always been a fear that I would have to sacrifice content in order to achieve this goal.  A recent experience made me realize that this does not have to be the case. In my physics class, we have been studying Newton’s laws of motion.  Part of our summative assessment involved students being tasked with a problem.  They would be given a set of three carts and they had to design an evidence based strategy to give one cart the greatest displacement.  There were rules like no touching the ground and all carts had to start together.  But, outside of those rules, students were given creative freedom.   Now, the goal of the problem itself is not an authentic scientific experience at all.  But, there are many more important goals embedded within this assessment.  In

I said 15 minutes so I'll keep this short. On October 9th, the Elmbrook School District hosted a Wisconsin CanvasCon focused on making learning personal.  I was lucky enough to be able to present at the conference.  I did a quick screen cast of my presentation below (I took 45 minutes and made it less than 15).  The focus of the presentation is the ways in which Canvas allows teachers to fully realize Universal Design for Learning.  Below that, you'll find my full presentation.

When I was young, my goal in life was to be a dermatologist.  I took classes in high school geared towards this goal.  How did I come to this goal?  My parents told me it was what I’d be.  As time progressed, I began to realize my goals in life had to be my own.  As teachers of specific content, we need to realize that all of our students do not have the goal to be a master in our field of instruction. This step of allowing students to determine their own goals in taking our class is one key to moving to a truly personalized environment.  As an instructor, I am FAR FAR away from realizing this aspect of instruction.  But with the help of my co-teacher Andelee Espinosa, we are beginning to realize what this can look like with one of our students who has a very specific set of goals. I won't go into the specifics of this student’s situation, but teachers will all recognize the situation as not unique in education.  This student is taking our physics course for credit acquisiti

The idea of a personalized learning environment seems like a wonderful idea.  Students working at their own pace and on their own way to demonstrate mastery of learning targets.  But as a teacher, it seems like an impossible task to manage.  How could it be possible to keep everyone on track?  It has the possibility of being a chaotic environment which could feel like a free for all.   This week in our physics course, we are finally seeing what we had envisioned become reality.  We are into our 3rd unit of the school year. It is projectile motion and we're nearing the end of it. For their summative assessment for the unit, students will be assessed using the following rubric. Although all students had the same outcomes, they were given a variety of different ways to demonstrate mastery. Option 1: Sports Project Check-in Our project for the 1st term focuses on the driving question “How can I use physics to hack sports?”  Students are focusing on a specific techni

At Brookfield Central High School have just passed the three week grading period and are approaching the first parent teacher conferences of the year. My thoughts are turning to clarifying my grading practices to students and parents as more scores are being entered into the gradebook.  I have completely restructured the grade reporting in my online gradebook this year.  This was due to struggles I had last year in trying to implement what I believe to be best grading practices into my grade reporting.  Much of my grading philosophy has been informed by Robert Marzano and Marzano Research, specifically the wonderful book Classroom Assessment & Grading that Works .   Traditionally, as I prepare for teacher conferences, I use a student summary report I print from our online gradebook to guide the discussion with parents.  Our grading program in my district is Infinite Campus (IC).  I really like the software and find it extremely easy to use.  Below you’ll see a sample st