The first question they were asked to reflect on in groups was about how the potential energy discussion from the previous day would relate to 6th grade teaching. I posted previously about this - about how consensus is being formed, and whether or not there is a need to be more explicit about it. However, even in a fairly off-task group (which the group I watched today was), the main points seem to be coming up (if i'm even right on what the 'main points' are - see my post on being a videographer). Here are some snippets (not exact quotes but close):
- when you learn a new method... when you need to attack new material use a known method - then relates it to ET - all the sudden yesterday was using ET that [we] now know well to tackle hard stuff - yesterday put [the participants] in the position of what is it like to ... put me in [6th graders] shoes
what interested me about this statement is that she is echoing Eleanor's statement from last week (about new techniques best being explored through known situations while new situations are best explored through known techniques), that was said during a wrap-up discussion but never really made concrete. I thought it was a beautiful point then and wanted it really driven home, so was happy to see it creeping up again. How does this happen? What do they absorb? As teachers, how do we know how effective we are in getting this kind of idea across without feeling the need to harp on it? I still have that feeling that saying something repeatedly is necessary - it's reassuring to me as a teacher, but is not done here AT ALL... but rather giving someone repeated need to work things out themselves is the technique used here - but when doing that, without having a bunch of people observing, how would we ever catch such a gem of a statement where we hear them buying-in??
- all represented something in different ways - have to know what arrows... mean
This statement relates back to the consensus idea - it came up the previous day that one of the whiteboards had arrows used two different ways (I have that in my recording - and they were referencing this in specific) - here they were talking about different representations being good, and strengths and weaknesses of different models, but explicitly stating that you have to know what the things mean - have to be explicit about definitions. This was a point of frustration for me yesterday - why wasn't that point 'driven home' by the instructors - but yet it was there today... how? this was the example I used in my previous post - that I would have asked a wrap up activity to get them to state this explicitly yesterday - but it was still there today - they remembered that flaw and realized the need for consistency. (later at another table during wrap-up discussion someone says "a model is a representation - what are the good things about it and what doesn't work so well" - that should be on Kayla's video)
- 6th graders... if kid didn't have any real world reference points, what might PE look like... experiences to hang the concepts on i think they'd be lost - gotta introduce those first concepts - can make that JUST AS EXPERIENTIAL - hesitate to call what SV does as inquiry-based, it's MYSTERY-BASED
This was the quote of the day - absolutely brilliant - Arny again!! but mystery-based - that's how i feel... this whole process is a mystery. how is it working? i feel in the dark - they feel in the dark, yet somehow it's all working out. But beyond that - it's beautiful that they realized that even when introducing new concepts they think they CAN find an experiental way of doing it - even if this activity isn't exactly what they want to replicate.
There was also this cute moment:
- ball 1 and ball 4 will be same... elastic collision (lots of agreement with him) multiple chiming in here 'that's how i labeled mine too!!'
they were all excited about consensus not just in the idea but in the representation
- every single one of these balls was stuck, no recoil - completely inelastic - what happens is not only conservation of momentum but also a pulse of force
this was after the demo when they were asked to work it out in their group - i didn't get it at all ... 'also a pulse of force' ... what? and why are force and momentum not being related here? What about impulse??? This echos the idea i brought up at the instructor meeting this evening - that they seem hesitant to use the word force because this is "energy theater" (or energy workshop... or whatever) but force is an important role - it is the mechanism (in one way of defining that term) - why not encourage them to see what role force plays rather than to have them feel like they shouldn't use the word? What explicitly makes them feel like force is a bad word in here?
Here's another moment that emphasizes this:
- they're deliberately trying to confuse us by separating out magnetic force and magnetic potential
this seems counter-productive to me. but there's something deeper about this whole issue. I brought this point up in the instructor meeting (Benedikt got the video) and SV said something about Costos (spelling??) suggesting a different use of the word mechanism, and that we could have the full ET without getting into terminology trappings, and thus enable consensus building within the community without a need to match terminology to the broader physics community (he said something like 'we don't run into any trouble there')... because this is a big concern, right? we want THEM to build meaning, community, consensus - but AT SOME POINT they need to relate to the broader world of physicists which usually (though SV pointed out a lot of the things addressed here aren't so clear) already has their own consensus (terminology definitions). And SV may be doing something great in finding a workshop that bypasses this - but at some point doesn't it have to happen in our classrooms? I think during the meeting SV was arguing no, but I don't agree. I agree it doesn't have to be our focus - but if training people to go into the workforce, grad school, whatever - it has to happen at some point. HOW DO I RECONCILE THIS???
At one point I thought I heard the group use the word 'capability' instead of energy - that seems to me to be quite analogous to 'potential' and perhaps how it came up - I think it would be interesting to explore their term use more - in terms of sense-making (not conceptual understanding) - like the quote i posted from several days back where they decide to use the word process instead of mechanism, because for that group process held more meaning - it was more clear.
Otherwise there was a lot of background noise today and my group spent a lot of time off topic - so while I'm frustrated I don't have exact quotes for these snippets - that's the best I could type in real time and it captures most of what I found interesting...
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