Making Work Work

SOCS - P  Wow, I am still spinning after reading tonight.  Paper could have been called Making more Work out of Work.  The way I find it in books seems consistent with exams.  (Schwackhamer)

I knew that bar graphs and energy flow diagrams were coming up since looking at O'Shea site.  I have not used her worksheets since I did not know the proper way to make this learning more concrete.  But I will have to look at hers again, listen a little harder in our workshop and try to see where this makes understanding work and energy stronger for students.  I get it that they are circular in definitions but I have not come across an issue before.  This unit has thrown me for a loop.

SOCS - P  Another Arons reading, discussing a chapter from any high school physics book, that focuses on the need for clear language usage.   It seems so easy to gloss over these definitions an move on.  (Arons 4.1-4.5, 4.8 - 4.9)

Arons 3.1-3.12

SOCS-C  Arons writes of dynamics and new preconceptions students bring to class.  I read about cautions in defining force and mass and guess I understand that these words are not used in the first chapters of a physics book.  But can we really not rely on something being taught in the middle school? (Arons)

SOCS-C  The big workbook of lessons is a nice addition to a teachers resource bookshelf.  When a conceptual problem is addressed as the concept is introduced can start the conceptual change in the student maybe without really knowing it.  (Camp, Clement)

In the past, before I knew I was a transmission physics instructor, I would have told a rookie teacher that they would be nuts to spend two lessons and a lab on the Normal Force!  My students seem to have the idea that a table pushes back, possible not to the microscopic target range, but where they have trouble is the direction a ramp pushes back while at an angle or what happens to the normal force when two forces push against it.  As I think, just after I write, maybe I see what a stronger definition can do to help my students work.  Never mind.