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Whole Story
Do you have another story you would be willing to share? That would be great. I would love to hear that one.
Similar in Physics, my first teaching assignment was in an all-Catholic girls high school. When I came in teaching the first year, [I was] teaching introductory basic Physics. The first few weeks I spent really grappling with the kids over distance [vs.] time graphs, velocity [vs.] time graphs, and acceleration [vs.] time graphs. As a first year teacher, which is what I was at the time, I felt like we spent an inordinate amount of our time on this thing and they still didn’t get it. I mean I thought we had. I explained it verbally. I tried all sorts of different things. Well the very next year I got a hold of a Vernier program - some Vernier software that would allow the students to look at a graph of distance versus time that was predicted on the computer screen and then with a motion detector they could try to match that graph with their bodies. I think in one day those kids learned what the other students did not learn in three weeks. It was the most effective teaching tool I had ever seen, it was incredible. So what I did is I used an overhead projector connected to the computer to throw it up on the wall or on a screen so the whole class could see this graph. Then I made a rule that nobody could laugh at the first student that tried and the first student then would take the motion detector and figure out which way was positive and which way was negative. We talked about how you define positive and negative, and it was a great lesson and it worked so well. The kids were eager, eager to try it, eager. And then you could change the graphic... They all wanted to do it. After the first person, of course then it was free to laugh and everybody was having a great time yelling, ‘Stop, turn around, it’s telling you to stop!’ or whatever. I mean they were just so engaged I couldn’t believe it and they transferred it immediately to the paper version of it. And then the cool thing about that software is it gave you several different distance versus time graphs for the children to try to match with their bodies. What I really wish is that there was a technology where we could input different ones because they could have been going for a long time. They were really enjoying it and there were only a limited number of motions available on the pre-set ones. I would have liked one that I could have programmed in something else... Could we do a curve? What does that mean? Let’s get some acceleration in there. But the other thing that was really cool was that we did have velocity versus time graphs and so after doing the three sample distance versus time graphs I threw a velocity time graph up, which if you are in that mode of distance versus time and you don’t carefully look at the axis, it looks like you’ve got to jump from one spot [to another] really quickly, you know, and they were freaked and they were doing it all wrong. It really boils down to, you have to look at the axis, I mean it was great; it paid off in a big way. And I had that up on open house nights - you know like whenever the parents had to come up to the school. I would always have that thing up and their parents could try it. They loved it. It was very captivating.
Wonderful! Let’s do the same with the parameters around this story. The goal?
The goal was to understand the relationship between distance versus time and what all, all the information you can get from a distance [vs.] time graph including the velocity and acceleration. And the same thing for velocity [vs.] time and acceleration [vs.] time.
Wonderful! A great wisdom that a teacher might take away from this lesson?
Is that the kids participating in the actual, having their bodies do the motion and seeing that instant gratification of whether they were matching or not with what they were thinking, was invaluable - much better than any theoretical story I could make up for the graphs that I was having them do on paper.
Wonderful! This school you said was private?
Private Catholic girls’ school in .
The students were what grade level?
They were sophomores or juniors, maybe some seniors.
Sophomores or juniors. SES?
Pretty mixed, it was in . This was a Catholic school, it was not an expensive school and they did a lot of scholarships. I think the tuition was $3500.00 a year so it was an option to the parents to the decaying public schools. So it was mixed, from low to high.
The attitude of the students toward learning in general, their demeanor?
It was pretty good. It wasn’t super enthusiastic but it certainly wasn’t negative. They would work if you convinced them there was a reason to do so. They were there.
Wonderful!
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