Post from Tom on 9-27

In her post Deb brought up the idea of having a safe enough environment for students to get into full participation, I am finding that this is not the easiest thing to accomplish. I feel like I am always trying to help students dare to voice their opinions or questions. I did have a good experience yesterday in physics, we had gone over newtons first law and I was hoping they could derive the second. I had them hanging weights (variety of
force) of the table to accelerate a car at different rates. The entire
class was engaged and trying to find out how to better their experiment. I
the end they plotted their data and did come up with F=ma while I probed them with questions. Honestly, I think they were a bit weirded out, I heard one of the girls comment to her neighbor, "wow, he really gets excited about this doesn't he" But that's ok, I was exited.

Post from Tom on 9-21-2007

Yesterday I spent the day at Gunison high school observing some of their science and math classes. Boy I tell you what, their classes sure are different than mine. I don't know how they can get their classes to be so stinking quiet. I do want more class participation than they have though.
I am at a total loss on how to cover the material, the teachers I observe give the kids facts to learn and memories and give them cookbook labs to trick the students into thinking they are doing science, but when they get back in the class the teacher once again regurgitates everything they should have learned. I have been trying my best to help the students go though the same thought process as the scientists who generated the things we know today. the problem is that the students, parents and administrators think that I am covering way to much material. No, my students will probably never be tested on the significance of Rutherford's gold foil experiment, but can they honestly understand the evolution of atomic theory without making them think through his findings on their own.

Big Bang Theory

James,
Wow, the big bang theory is pretty advanced and most students will only have heard the word. A lot of them will be asking, "how do scientist know the universe started with a bang?" and "what does the theory have to do with me?" I think the trick is getting them to think about it in a novel way. Did you lay down any background on the topic before you gave them the survey? Because the Big Bang is the most popular, none of the student probably have heard of any opposing theories. Maybe you could introduce them to some of these. I just did a quick search and found a pretty simplistic site that gives some basic info about some of the other theories. The site is http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ Check it out and see if there is anything in there that you could use to get a discussion going about the opposing theories. One of the quotes I like from the site is found in the section titled "Big Bang Theory - The Only Plausible Theory?"

One scientist writes:
Is the standard Big Bang theory the only model consistent with these evidences? No, it's just the most popular one. Internationally renown Astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis explains: "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."4

I think this sums up what you are trying to teach your students: to think critically about what they hear, not just blindly accept it. Perhaps an activity where one half of the class researches the Big Bang theory and the other half researches the opposition, followed by a debate might be interesting. You could engaged the students by offering a prize to whichever side won a vote at the end. I don't know how much time you have planned for this activity, but it sounds like it would be fun. Good luck!

A Post from James (Delving into Theories)

Todd, for my classes this week I have been handing out a survey on the big bang theory and trying desperately to get at the students attitudes and ideas concerning the theory. It has been interesting and rewarding but more difficult that it seems like it should be. I have some who have been willing to let me know how they really feel, but not enough. Many of my students do not enjoy learning about the theory because it doesn’t make sense to them according to their religion. On the other hand I also have a fair amount of students that accept the theory at face value because they think that smart people have figured it out enough. Somehow I wish that I could get my students to see the value in learning about theories instead of immediately discounting everything about them or blindly accepting them. At the same time I also wish that I could get them to tear them apart and ask the hard questions so that their learning can go to the next level. Anyway…. James

Tom's Post 9-7-2007

Wow, I feel like I should be getting on top of things by now but I feel more like I am just getting more burried as we go. I hope I havn't completely lost my students. I am amazed at the deficiancies that some of the students come into the classroom with. We started doing some problems dealling with calorimitry to get them ready to do it in the lab. To get them comfortable with the use of E=mcT I helped them crank some simple problems, then one relativly dificult one to push them. I ended up helping the class as a whole work through this one. By the time I was done I had filled up half the white board and the class was staring at me with glazed eyes. The problem didn't involve too complex of math, it was just that it involved alot of steps and they simply shut off. Right now I honestly feel that I am getting more confusing done than teaching.

Tom, I just wanted to refer you to a website that I learned about at one of my summer professional development classes that I took this summer for my endorsements. It is http://t4.jordan.k12.ut.us/teacher_resources/science/modelclassroomroot/index.html and that is a _ between the teacher and the resources. If you click on the "model classroom" link there is a list of subjects with a lot of great ideas for teaching most of the science areas. I have used ideas from the earth systems and chemistry links that are great.

One that I used this year was an inquiry lab for reviewing the scientific method. In the lab I bought four different types of toilet paper and the students had to figure out which type was the best. They had to figure out 3 expermints on their own and determine the parameters for what made toilet paper the best. Then they had to measure data for those experiments and show their data in graph form on the board, explaining their conclusions for the class. It took about an hour or so and it was amazing to see the creativity that the students came up with. Some added pencils or rulers to the paper to see how strong it was before it broke, others got it wet and measured the area that it soaked up to test absorbancy, and one group even tested it to see how well it could hold marbles when it was wet!, among other ideas. It was great fun and it came from the website - I only had to modify it a little bit to make it better for my classes. Good luck!