Being the somewhat curious dude that I am, I have purchased both a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. They share some common purposes and both seem like they would be a welcome addition to a high school classroom. However, I’m here to tell you today that the Arduino should be much more welcomed. Okay, I just have to get this off my chest. The Raspberry Pi kind of bites. I actually don’t have a clear idea on who in North America would want one.

Factoring, or Why I Understand That Some Kids Hate Math This is the first year that I’m teaching math full time and the first topic that I’ve jumped into is Factoring and Polynomials. It seems to be a fairly substantive topic in terms of Prescribed Learning Objectives and the amount of space it gets in the textbook. However, it also seems to me that it is a fairly twisted topic. Twisted, as in sick or deranged.

I recently got a new contract in Vancouver teaching Math 10 and Math 8. While I feel pretty comfortable with the material in these courses, teaching math has some stark differences from science. Whereas each junior science course is like a fresh start for the students, math isn’t. Each student in math is carrying years of baggage with them by the time they hit secondary school. For Math 10, the baggage is even greater.

[]One question that I’ve seen pop up again and again in science classes is, “what would happen to Earth if the Sun suddenly disappeared?” I’ve had this question in science 9, science and technology, and in physics. I guess it’s one of those things that many people hypothesize on. I was thinking about this today, along with the idea of Essential Questions driving classroom explorations and learning. I wondered if we could use the following as the essential question for a unit on gravity in Physics 12

I’m not sure what other teachers have noted, but I’ve been surprised at the difficulty that students have when learning about momentum. I think that for a year and half I sort of assumed that kids found momentum an easy topic. You know, they take some mass and multiply it by velocity and bam! Momentum. $$\vec{p} = m\vec{v}$$ Except I noted some problems. Now, this is where I’m supposed to drop some pearls of wisdom and reflection on you.

While I’m working on some new post for my blog, I thought I’d share some other blog posts that may trigger some interesting educational explorations for you. Having a Growth Mindset is a big topic these days, and with good reason. Every math teacher knows this, as we constantly hear the phrase “I’m not good at math.” Geoff Schmit’s recent post Introducing Growth Mindset is a good place to start reading up on mindset.

My Experience as a Teacher Something very interesting happened to me during our 2nd parent-teacher interviews this year. None of the parents I spoke with asked about grades. Most of you don’t know the school that I taught at, but in many ways it is quite different from other public schools in BC. I don’t have the specific numbers, but about 80% of our graduates this year are moving onto university next fall.

Marking for the end of the year is finally done, and I thought I’d wrap up my posts on Inquiry. I’ve already talked a bit about my plan and what happened throughout the year, and in this post I’d like to briefly outline my plan for next year. The biggest change I would like to implement is that every student will be required to have a lab notebook. This notebook will contain notes for all of their labs and inquiries, and possibly reflections on their learning.

Previously I wrote about my general approach to inquiry in physics this year. In short, I tried to have the students form questions and design experiments when presented with a phenomenon to investigate. In today’s post I would like to explain where all of this led our classes. After a few weeks of lab activities, I saw a path forward that would give the students scaffolding towards the goal of becoming resourceful and skilled in inquiry and analysis.

This year in physics 11 I wanted to really instill the idea of inquiry, and the asking of questions. Coupled with this I hoped to re-emphasize labs during the course and try to do as many as possible. As with most things I seem to do, I had some success and some not-so-much success. I’m going to break this topic down into three different posts, beginning with how I tried to set things up, how we ended, and what I look forward to do next year.