NATURAL SCIENCE 412A Fall 2006 Tues. and Thurs. 12:30 -14:50

COURSE INFORMATION: Physics for Elementary Teachers (PET)

INSTRUCTOR:

Phoebe Roeder; Office: AD 103 (Liberal Studies Office);

(619) 594-4812 or 594-0597 or 469-6460 (home); proeder@mail.sdsu.edu;

Office hours, Tues. and Thurs., in the classroom (PA119) half hour after class.

STRUCTURE OF THE PET COURSE:

This is an activity-based and discussion-oriented course with four major goals:

(1) Physics Content: To help you develop a deep understanding of physics ideas that can be used to explain interesting phenomena, and are included in the elementary school science curriculum;

(2) Nature of Science: To help you practice and develop an understanding of how knowledge is developed within a scientific community: that doing science involves using evidence and creative thinking, that knowledge is established through collaboration and consensus, and that science knowledge can change over time;

(3) Elementary Students’ Ideas: To help you analyze and appreciate the thinking of elementary students while they engage in scientific inquiry, and to make connections with your own learning of physics; and

(4) Learning about learning: To help you become more aware of how your own physics ideas change and develop over time and how the structure of the learning environment and curriculum facilitate these changes.

There will be very little formal lecturing in this course. Indeed, all class sessions will take place in the lab. The basic aim of the PET format is to allow you to take charge of your own learning, with the instructor as a guide. During class you will spend most of your time performing experiments, working occasionally with computers, and discussing ideas with your classmates. We expect you to continue your learning at home through a series of carefully designed homework assignments, many involving use of the web. We hope you will find many of our teaching and learning strategies valuable and appropriate for you to use when you begin your teaching career.

The PET curriculum is divided into the following seven cycles:

Cycle 1: Interactions and Energy

Cycle 2: Interactions and Forces

Cycle 3: Interactions and Fields

Cycle 4: Model of Magnetism

Cycle 5: Electric Circuit and Electromagnetic Interactions

Cycle 6: Light, Heat Conduction and Infrared Interactions

Cycle 7: Interactions and Conservation

The goal of each cycle is to have you develop a set of ideas that can be used to help explain phenomena that will be explored within that cycle. There are two types of activities within each cycle. The first several activities are called Developing Our Ideas activities. During these activities you will perform experiments to collect evidence in support of ideas that you will develop. Finally, in the Applying Ideas activities you will compare your ideas with those developed by scientists, then apply the ideas to explain interesting phenomena.

STRUCTURE OF THE PET ACTIVITIES

Each individual activity consists of several sections with slightly different aims.

Purpose

A short introduction describing the aims of the activity and how it ties in to the topic. It also poses the key question(s) for the activity.

Initial Ideas

Questions that give you a chance to express your own initial ideas on the topic of the activity before you do any experiments. These initial ideas are important, as they will form the basis on which you build further understanding.

Collecting and Interpreting Evidence

Here is where you do the experiments and record your predictions, observations and data that provide the evidence to support or refute your ideas.

Summarizing Questions

Working together, the individual groups or the whole class will try to summarize what they have learned in the activity by answering a few questions.

Throughout the activities you will be writing answers to questions on the activity sheets themselves. These will not be handed in. Three types of questions will be identified by small icons:

Prediction Question. A chance for you to use your current thinking to anticipate what you think will happen. This is a vital step in your learning and should not be “glossed over”. If the results of an experiment do not agree with your prediction DO NOT go back and change them; this is valuable evidence of how your ideas are evolving.

Observation Question: A place for you to record the results of experiments. These results may take several forms, including describing observations, sketching diagrams, or recording numerical values in a table.

Making Sense Question. This is where you get to interpret the results of experiments in terms of your ideas. Do the results agree with your predictions or not? If so, they provide evidence to support your ideas. If not, maybe your ideas need to be modified.
REQUIRED MATERIALS:

Physics for Elementary Teachers is available from Aztec Shops. The author is Goldberg. The PET Student Resources CD is included with the printed materials. This CD includes electronic versions of all the homework assignments (in Microsoft Word), plus several Quicktime movies of elementary children performing science activities. These movies are part of a set of special Elementary Student Ideas (Learning about Learning) homeworks, to be assigned periodically during the semester. There are also some other movies of physics phenomena on the CD, which you will need to view in order to answer some homework questions. Other course materials will be distributed to you as needed during the course.

It is strongly recommend that you purchase a small, 3-ring binder to organize handouts that supplement the PET curriculum materials. If you prefer, you can tear out the materials in the text and arrange them plus handouts in your own notebook.

ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION:

You will be primarily responsible for your own learning in this class. By engaging in meaningful discussions with your group members, by actively participating in whole class discussions, and by performing interesting experiments, you will develop with your classmates a set of ideas. Similar to the way in which scientists develop ideas, your ideas will be based on evidence gathered from the experiments you do. At appropriate times, you will be able to compare your ideas with those developed by scientists. It is expected that except for some special jargon, the ideas you develop with the class should be quite similar to the scientists’ ideas.

Because you will play such an important role in your own learning, and especially the learning of your classmates, you are expected to come to class on time every class period and participate throughout the period. See attendance policy on the last page.

HOMEWORK:

Daily homework

Homework will be assigned almost every class period and, unless otherwise stated, will be due at the beginning of the following class period. The answers to most homework will be posted on a bulletin board in the hallway near the class. Sometimes the homework will be gone over and discussed during the class period when it is due.

Many of the assignments will require you to have access to a computer with an Internet connection and Java 4.1 or 5.1. If you do not have a computer at home, you can use the computers in one of the SDSU computer labs. If you have your own computer, you should check whether http://cpucips.sdsu.edu/petsims will open. If you have a phone line rather than high speed internet, the first time will probably take about 3 minutes; later times will load much, much more quickly. You will have to click “Yes” to accept the download. The window for the first activity should open and show a little block on a track.

Elementary Students’ Ideas (Learning About Learning) homeworks

These homework assignments are more extensive. They will require you to view Quicktime movies of children from grades two through five discussing physics ideas. You will be asked to make claims about what the students are learning and will use direct quotes from what the children say or pictures they draw as evidence to support your claims. Electronic transcripts of the movies and the students’ pictures are provided on the student resource CD, along with the movies themselves. Specific instructions will be given in class. We will spend class time discussing the children’s learning during the periods when the LAL homeworks are due.

GRADING CRITERIA AND TENTATIVE DATES:

Course component	Point value	Approximate Dates
Cycle 1 Test	40 points	Thurs Sept. 14
Cycles 1, 2 and 3 Test	100 points	Thurs Oct. 12
Cycles 4 and 5 Test plus some review	100 points	Thurs Nov. 16
Cycles 6 and 7 plus some review	100 points	Tues Dec. 12
Children’s Ideas Papers (LAL)	60 points	See schedule
Total points =	400 points

TENTATIVE GRADING SCALE:

Usual cut		92 % A	90% A-
off for	88 % B+	82 % B	80 % B-
a given	78 % C+	72 % C	70 % C-
grade:	68% D+	60 % D

ATTENDANCE

Students who miss more than one day of class during the first or second part of the course will have 3 negative points added to their score for each additional absence.

Part I: Day 1 through Day 15 Part II: Day 16 through the final

Ten points can mean the difference between a B and a B+! Being late two times will count as an absence. Limited medical emergencies will be excused only if explained in writing and accompanied by a note on letterhead from you or your family member's doctor.

Papers submitted more than 10 minutes after the beginning of class are considered late and will have 20% of the total points subtracted for each class period that they are late.

We apologize for implementing this policy. Unfortunately, before implementing this policy, students who attended class regularly and were always on time suffered unduly from lack of consideration by those who were frequently absent or late.

NS 412A Fall 2006: Tues-Thurs Tentative Schedule

Date	Activity Name	Assign Homework
Day 1 Tu 8/29	Introduce course, distribute Course Information and Background questionnaire	C1A1 HW#1 LAL C1A1 HW#2
	C1 Act 1 Measuring Motion (90 min)
Day 2 Th 8/31	C1 Act 2 Motion Energy (65 min)
	C1 Act.3 Elastic Mechanical Interactions (60 min)
Day 3 Tu 9/5	C1 Act 4 Slowing and Stopping (75 min)	C1A4 HW
	C1 Act 5 Constructing Explanations (begin-45 min)
Day 4 Th 9/7	C1 Act 5 Constructing Explanations (end-30 min)	C1A5 HW
	C2 Act 1 Interactions and Force (90 min)
Day 5 Tu 9/12	C2 Act 2 Motion with a continuous Force (50 min)	C2A2 HW C2A3 HW#2
	C2 Act 3 Pushing against the motion (60 min)
Day 6 Th 9/14	Cycle 1 Test (65 min)	C2A3 HW#1
	C2 Act 4 Children’s Ideas about F&M (50 min)
Day 7 Tu 9/19	Go over C2A3 HW #1 (15 min)	C2A5 HW LAL
	C2 Act 5 Slowing and Stopping (100 min)
Day 8 Th 9/21	C2 Act 6 Changing Force Strength and Mass (80 min)	C2A6 HW
	C2 Act 7 Motion with Balanced Forces (Begin-30 min)
Day 9 Tu 9/26	C2 Act 7 Motion with Balanced Forces (End-40 min)
	C2 Act 8 Constructing Explanations Using Forces (Begin-50 min)
Day 10 Th 9/28	C2 Act 8 Constructing Explanations Using Forces (End-20 min)	C3A1 HW
	Go over C2A5 HW LAL in class (40 min)
	C3 Act 1 Magnetic Interactions (60 min)
Day 11 Tu 10/3	C3 Act 2 Gravitational Interactions (90 min)	C3A2 HW
	C3 Act 3 Strength of the Gravitational Interaction (30 min)
Day 12 Th 10/5	C3 Act 3 Strength of the Gravitational Interaction (60 min)	C3A3 HW
	C3 Act 4 Explanations Involving Gravity (Begin 50 min)
Day 13 Tu 10/10	Review for Midterm (60 min)
	C4 Act 1 Experiments with Magnetism (Begin 60 min) (not expt 1)
Day 14 Th 10/12	Cycles 1, 2, 3 Test
Day 15 Tu 10/17	Initial Model for Magnetism: C4 A2 Initial Ideas (50 min)
	Testing 2 Models for Magnetism: Choose 2
Day 16 Th 10/19	Finish: (1) C4 A1 Metals, (2) C4 A3 Exp 1 Cut Nail, (3) C4 A3 Exp 2 St 1-2 &9-11 Hammering, (4) handout: Water	C4A3 HW#1 C4A3 HW#2
	Do: C4 A2 St 4-8 iron filings; C4 A2 St 12 computer; C4 A2 Exp 2 distance Create new model if necessary

Day 17 Tu 10/24	Go over C4A3 HW#1 and HW#2 (20 min)	C4A4 HW LAL (Nat Sci) C4A5 HW LAL
	Final Model for Magnetism (20 min)
	C4 Act 4: Constructing Explanations About Magnetism (70 min) (not do Problem #4)
Day 18 Th 10/26	C4 Act 5 The Nature of Science (60 min)
	C5 Act 1 Electric Circuit Interactions (Begin – 60 min)
Day 19 Tu 10/31	C5 Act 1 Electric Circuit Interactions (End – 30 min)
	C5 Act 2 Electric Circuits and Energy (40 min)
	Go over C4 Act 5 HW LAL in class (40 min)
Day 20 Th 11/2	C5 Act 3 Electric Circuits and Current (100+ min)	C5A3 HW
Day 21 Tu 11/7	C5 Act 4 Circuits With More Than One Bulb (80 min)	C5A4 HW C5A5 HW C5A6 HW LAL
	C5 Act 5 Magnets, Electric Current and Motors (40 min)
Day 22 Th 11/9	C5 Act 6 The Wake-Up System (45 min)	C6A1 HW#1
	C6 Act 1 Shiny surfaces and seeing (65 min)
Day 23 Tu 11/14	Go over C5A6 HW LAL (45 min)	C6A1 HW#2 LAL C6A3 HW
	C6 Act 3 Non-shiny White and Black Surfaces (60 min) Review for Test
Day 24 Th 11/16	Cycles 4 and 5 Test (70 min)
	C6 Act 2 Elementary Students’ Ideas about Light (50 min)
Day 25 Tu 11/21	Finish C6A2 Student’s Ideas diagrams (40 min) Go over C6A3 HW Refraction (15 min) Skip C6A4 Light and Color for now C6 Act 5 Heat Conduction & Infrared Interactions (50 min)	C6A5 HW
	C7 Act 1 Energy inputs, outputs, and changes (30 min)
Th 11/23	Happy Thanksgiving
Day 26 Tu 11/28	Go over C6A5 HW (20 min) heat C7 Act 1 Energy inputs, outputs, and changes (60 min)	C7A1 HW
	C6 Act 4 Light and Color (60 min)
Day 27 Th 11/30	Go over C7A1 HW (10 min) C7 Act 2 Keeping track of energy (70 min)	C7A2 HW
	Further exploration of color
Day 28 Tu 12/5	C6 Act 6 Phenomena involving the light, heat conduction and infrared interactions (65 min) C6A6 HW LAL	C6A6 HW
	C7 Act 3 Energy Conservation and Useful Energy (60+ min)
Day 29 Th 12/7	Discuss C6A6 HW LAL (student learning—20 min) Finish C7A3
	Review for Test on Cycles 6 and 7
Tu 12/12	Final Exam-mostly Cycles 6 and 7 (1:00-3:00 pm)