Kelly O'Shea

In my Physics 10 update/upgrades, I built a new paradigm investigation for the Constant Acceleration Particle Model. The activity described here gets at the same things as my older activity, but it allows groups to do the investigation rather than the entire class together, and it gives more structure and space to the discussion

After the success of my balanced forces problem-set-replacing mini lab practicum stations, I wanted to design a similar activity for my unbalanced forces unit. One might think that this would be more challenging (or even impossible) to do since these stations need to involve objects with changing velocities (so the handy flip-up index cards wouldn’t work for checking answers)

In refreshing the design of my 10th grade Physics course, one thing I have been attempting to do is find new ways to replace worksheets or problem sets with different sorts of activities, especially ones that promote more group work and discourse within groups. (See kinematics card sort, momentum card sort

In connection with the AAPT summer meeting, the AAPT HS Physics Teacher Camp will be held on Sunday July 29th at the American Center for Physics near Washington, DC.. You don’t need to be a current member of AAPT or attend any other part of the summer meeting (though we encourage you to look into both—especially the HS Physics Teacher Day on Monday if you’ve never been to an AAPT meeting before). Everyone who attends the camp gets to share and learn from each other, and we even include work time at the end so that you can start turning your new ideas into action before the day is over. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, there is no better 1 day professional development for HS physics teachers.