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How to Practice Physics (By Really Trying)
I want to do a better job of teaching my students how to practice physics. When I tell them which skills need work (see the SBG tag for more details), I want them to have some ideas about what it looks...
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What should I know going into Honors Physics?
So, you’ve decided to take Honors Physics. I’m so excited for you! You probably already know that it’s going to be challenging, and you might be a little nervous since you don’t know what to expect...
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Advice from former Honors Physics students
One of the handouts that comes in the binders that I give to students is some advice from past students. These bits of wisdom come from the course evaluations over the past few years. It’s really...
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Usefulness of Test Corrections
I’ve always had my students do test corrections. When I used to award points, I would give some out (or “back”) for doing good corrections. I asked my students to complete them without consulting peers...
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Whiteboarding with Mistakes
Today was my first day of whiteboarding with one of my Honors Physics classes. My plan was to use The Mistake Game from the very beginning this year. I suspected it would help set the tone of...
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Monkey Monkey Monkey
Sometimes when I talk about the way that I grade (or actually, sort of don’t grade) to other adults, they scoff at the lack of points. They say things like, “If I were taking a quiz that I knew didn’t...
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Effort vs Luck
Now that we are out of September, my students have enough work to do outside of class that I don’t need to assign any specific homework. Still, this view of in-class and out-of-class work is a huge...
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SBG Cootie Catcher
Found in the physics classroom this spring: one standards-based grading focused cootie catcher (aka fortune teller, aka a lot of other names, I’m sure—check out the Wikipedia article about these things...
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Whiteboarding Mistake Game: A Guide
The Mistake Game (which I’ll describe in more detail in just a moment) has become the default mode of whiteboarding (problems, not experiments) in my physics classes. I’ve written about it before (old...
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The Right Thing, Said Once
Prologue: I have been doing a lot of thinking this year about what I’ve learned so far about teaching physics (and about teaching high school students in general) both as general reflection and as part...
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