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Re: [Phys-l] Effective Teaching

Inquiry based learning is an entirely different animal when you try to form the entire class around inquiry. You cannot get the volume of work done in the year that most SOLs require. The Modeling method developed at ASU by Dr. Hestenes is a wonderful approach to inquiry based teaching and provides a great way to start each unit with an inquiry based lab and follow-up. It takes quite a bit of time to get through the material because it uses Socratic questioning and students, themselves, developing the laws. It includes immediate feedback with peer review. It is very challenging and I try to implement it as much as possible but don't get the results that some have said they found using it 100% of the time. But then again, I am trying to get through an IB syllabus and have to cram in a lot of material in two years.

Good Luck with trying to implement inquiry into your classroom to a greater degree. It can be done for the mechanics portion, and I have found that it is actually fairly easy to implement without trying to add vocabulary in at the beginning using a modeling style approach.


Thompson, Michael U. wrote:
I have found it challenging to implement inquiry as a steady teaching approach throughout a course. I believe in it and sometimes I have had successful results. For instance, when introducing magnetism to first year students, we constructed simple stations that highlighted magnetic principles from simple (iron filings line up with field lines) to complex or amazing (right hand rule in action, induction, Lenz's law). Each station posed a question that asked students to tap into prior knowledge and attempt to explain the phenomenon. More importantly, the class collectively had memorable experiences as we set out to 'discover' the major principles of electromagnetism in the unit. We could always refer back to/revisit the demonstration to see how it illustrates the concept at hand.
The challenge I have found is to do this consistently. For example, take Newton's Laws, the most important concept in our first semester. What is a genuine, student-driven experience that introduces these laws without first using the laws themselves or learning the vocabulary that goes along with them? Does anybody have a slam-dunk approach? I am interested in hearing about such introductions to any or all of the major units: kinematics, forces, work & energy, momentum, gravity, circular motion, electrostatics, magnetism, circuits, thermodynamics, waves & sound, optics, and then uh-oh, modern physics (a pretty big can of worms to open at the end of the year when patience with learning has perhaps dropped a bit).
Are there suggestions for inquiry experiences that introduce the study of physics overall (the hook at the beginning of the year)? And to take it the other way, what do you do when you teach the second year (AP Physics or the like)? How do you introduce effectively when the students should know the fundamentals? What are the basic differences between first-year and second-year inquiry.
Our school system has tried to author inquiry approaches that all teachers use when teaching the standard curriculum. These were written by a few teachers in summer workshops. I would like to hear suggestions from a larger community.

________________________________

From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu on behalf of Julie Quah
Sent: Sun 2/10/2008 6:45 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Effective Teaching



my personal experiences on teaching kids by tapping into their prior
knowledge usually work out well. Prior knowledge acts as a lens
through which we view and absorb new knowledge. As new knowledge can
be overwhelming, students always find it less threatening to learn new
things in this manner, because such strategy is helpful for learners
to transit from the unfamiliar into something brand new. I have some
worksheets on such learning strategy. Do contact me offlist if you are
interested.

On Feb 11, 2008 5:48 AM, Doug Vixie <dv_rt3mf@charter.net> wrote:
On February 9, 2008, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

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The most important component of effective teaching is very difficult to implement. It has to do with building new knowledge on what is already known and understood. In a typical class each students has a different background; often dramatically different from is assumed. A teacher is expected to do "the best s/he can" under the imposed unfavorable conditions.
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These are excellent points. They were brought to my attention several years ago by a 9th grade physical science student. The student was very ADD and very teenager (eager to experience life). He was disruptive but not malicious nor belligerent. He was not doing well in physical science. Periodically he would refer to a previous middle-school science teacher and what a good teacher he was. One day the student complained about his grades in my class and said he would do better if we did labs first. He said his previous teacher usually did labs first followed by diagrams, vocabulary, problems, etc. I typically did it the other way--diagrams, vocabulary, and so on first, then labs to support what the students had learned. (That's how I was taught.)

I began putting labs first. We often start now with an inquiry lab. In fact, in Physical Science I do very few, "cookbook labs." For example, with density, I pose the question, "How is the mass of a rock related to its volume ('size')?" Students collect data, record it in their journals, construct a graph, and the discussion takes off. This new knowledge is built on the knowledge of measurements and using scales and other equipment. I haven't compared grades before and after this change but I'm sure they're improved. There must be some research out there on that. I think it is helping the students to learn more effectively, and I feel that this method has made class management a lot easier, perhaps by reducing the amount of structure imposed on the students.

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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l