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Re: RealTime & Workshop Physics in H.S. classes



I'd like to address this question to anyone who has been using this material in H.S. classes.
We've been using the RealTime and Workshop material for a few years
now, and while we still think it very useful, several
questions/problems have arisen. I'd love to hear about other
colleagues experience and approach.
A few years back I attended Priscilla Laws' workshops at a summer AAPT meeting,
and then bought the Workshop materials on diskette from Vernier. In addition, a
colleague and I visited Dickinson and saw Priscilla's course in action. We are now making
extensive use of Workshop labs for mechanics in a course here for 10th graders.

1) Time constraints - In a college environment students can be
expected to make up or finish class work on their own time, and labs
can be open at off hours. (This is at true at Dickinson.) We can't
due this at my school - an independent day school, and it is generally
difficult for my students, even the conscientious ones, to come back
to class at any other time. (10th graders have very few free periods
etc.) In addition, we meet for five 50 minute periods a week.
Fortunately, I find that most of the Workshop material lends itself to
being broken up into reasonably short pieces. However, the ideal for
me is to be able to talk with the class for 15 to 20 minutes,
introducing, or re-introducing the activity at hand and going over
homework, before they start. This of course leaves only 30-35 minutes
for the lab - not enough time! Do you find the same problem?

2) Revisions - Have you found it necessary to revise the material
to make its degree of difficulty more suitable for HS students? I've had to make many
minor revisions to the labs, largely due to small differences in equipment and software.
I would expect that this is fairly common since computers and equipment vary, but the
difference in our students (10th graders vs. college freshman), has also lead to some
revising of the material. In general, this has meant that we have
simply not gone as far with a given topic. A specific case that I'm now pondering for next fall
is whether to do all four cases of accelerated motion in my weaker classes.
(Going forward speeding up, going forward slowing down, going backward speeding
up, etc.) As is often the case, the problem is one of all or nothing. Have you
found it necessary to discard or revise material due to its difficulty?

3) A related question - have you found that this material is too simple
for your brightest kids? I've had a few who complained about the
questions in the lab material being too repetitive and easy.

4) Homework - Tenth graders need a lot more structure than college
kids, and I think, more repetition. I really must give homework every night.
The homework assignments in the Workshop material are good, but there aren't
nearly enough of them, and I've had to write more, especially since
our texts don't correspond well. (Thus we use texts as references
only.) The real problem here is that many of the activities in
WP ought to be finished, or at least brought to a certain point,
BEFORE a homework assigment is given. Or, if homework must be given
every night, then it must fit very well with the activities already
completed. I have found this quite difficult to achieve, and so I'm
often left with a homework which is out of sync, or none at all to
give. AND, given the time constraints, when do we go over it?

5) Despite much effort to make my version of the written material
clear and easy to read, (I thought that I had made a few
improvements), I find that my students are abysmal readers. It seems
not so much that they can't read, as that they don't read. If time
were not an issue I could feel freer to let them blunder off in the
wrong direction. "Read the handout" is the answer to almost every
question they ask. Any suggestions?

6) Correcting - Without TAs to do correcting we are swamped, and not
able to check student responses and homework nearly as often as I would like.
Thus there tends to be a periodic "running down" of the quality of
their responses to the lab questions.

*****************************************
Gary Hemminger
Dwight-Engelwood School
315 E. Palisade Ave.
Englewood, New Jersey
07631
e-mail: hemmig@d-e.pvt.k12.nj.us
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