Waterman180

Video analysis is a powerful tool in the classroom. With Chromebooks and cellphones, students are able to film and measure data about very quick events using slow-motion controls. Pivot Interactives https://www.pivotinteractives.com/ has a whole library of quality videos that have already been filmed for students to analyze as well.

Two great things happened today, I got to meet a bunch of fabulous 9th-grade students and I got to start the #dailydatedoodle project again.

Teachers start before we actually “start”. After a great summer of visiting National Parks with my family, it was good to be with fellow teachers again.

Mentor training meeting was a good time to reflect on what teachers need to be successful in today’s classroom. Also gave me pause, I’m about to start my 19th year of teaching!

Sketchnotes forever!

Students worked in groups to build a Rube Goldberg machine to perform a task of their choosing. Throughout the build, the themes of Energy conservation and conservation of matter were explored. Many chose to use a battery operated LED circuit that they built because of the storytelling that can occur just with that one simple build:

• Electrical energy transformed to thermal energy by the soldering iron to solder the parts together in the circuit
• The transformation of chemical energy (battery) to electrical energy (circuit) to light energy (LED).
• Conservation of matter: measuring the decrease in the spool of solder mass at the beginning of the build, to the ending mass of the final circuit.

Always fun to watch the students’ process, and the joy that they have when their ideas work.

We investigate light at the end of Natural Science and Engineering and see how both wave theory and particle theory was necessary for us to understand the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Natural Science & Engineering students have been studying how heat energy added or removed from a system affects states of matter. We applied these ideas to learn how to solder. Each student created a ring of wire that included learning how to use wire strippers, create an in-line splice, and soldering that splice together with 99.3% Sn/0.7% Cu rosin core solder. They will use these skills next week when they build an LED flashlight which we will use to model the photoelectric effect.

The science department ran a food drive this week, the students donated a pickup-truck loaded of food headed for the Worcester County Food Bank.

Natural Science and Engineering built batteries out of common household parts that were able to light up a 2.2V red LED.