Today I had one of my classes do a mini lab at home, to make a Cartesian Diver out of a plastic straw, an elastic (that’s a rubber band for those of you outside the Boston area), a few paper clips and a water bottle.
I gave them the list of materials on Wednesday. In lieu of a written procedure, I showed them the 90-second video at https://youtu.be/XvYnhYs5Ftk and then put them in Zoom breakout rooms to collaborate.
I suspected that the lab would work well—it’s a simple enough process to build and not too tricky to get it to work. Explaining how it works is more of a challenge, so that’s their homework.
One of our vice principals has been dropping into classes to observe and sending highlights on Fridays, as a way to showcase some of the positive things going on in our school, so of course I invited her to observe the lab. Here’s her description from her Friday email:
I was only able to get into one class this week, but it was a great one! Mr. Bigler conducted an at home lab with his Honors Physics II class during B period today. He previously sent the students a list of four basic items needed to be able to complete this lab. When I entered the Zoom, yes I would have for sure been marked tardy to class, we watched a short one or two minute video of the lab being conducted and Mr. Bigler talked us through what was happening; this was a well welcomed change from simply reading the instructions on a piece of paper as I am a visual learner. He polled the students to see who was able to obtain all of the items and instead of being upset that many, including myself, were not able to have all the needed items he simply switched his game plan to taking a few extra minutes to identify those students that were able to gather them all and made sure to spread them into different breakout rooms first then adding the rest of us to those rooms. Most likely not his intended plan, however, he did not let this derail him or the class and moved forward with total calmness. He was gracious enough to make me a co-host so that I could move between the six breakout rooms. The students were all engaged as I moved through the breakout rooms each helping the student with the materials make adjustments as needed (verbally of course), in order to achieve the desired outcome. When the lab was over he brought everyone back to the main session and started to lead them, with a whiteboard shared, in a discussion about what they had observed.
I was very happy to be invited to watch this lesson. I thought that it was great to see how it is possible to conduct labs at home as a class. The students who were building the Cartesian Diver did a fantastic job of sharing their process with the others in the breakout room. Our students are so great and when given bars to reach they do!
Part of why things went so well is that this was my physics 2 class, which means all but two of the students were in my physics classes last year. The students were already comfortable with each other, comfortable with me, and had already spent a year with me teaching them how to do inquiry-based experiments and how to problem-solve and think critically. Even though we’re barely a month into the school year, she was effectively seeing a class that had already been together for a year.
I also enjoyed the fact that she has a great rapport with the students, which meant her presence in the class was a positive thing. The students enjoy a lot of banter with me and with each other, and that’s also this VP’s style, so a good time was had by all.
She was right about my having had to edit the plan on the fly, but I do that so often that I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Usually, when I start a lesson, I know where I need to end up by the end of it but I often have only a vague plan for how I’m going to get there, and I choose which demos to do and how to incorporate them in the moment. (Several years ago, one of my students dubbed my prep room the “Room of Requirement” from the Harry Potter books because I frequently disappear into it and come back out half a minute later with something that’s relevant to the discussion.)
