Author: Marianna Ruggerio

Marianna is a nationally acclaimed and award-winning physics educator in Northern Illinois. She teaches AP and on-track physics, is a teacher-leader for the Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools Partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a former APS STEPUP Advocate, and an active leader in the American Association of Physics Teachers. Marianna's interests lie in the intersection of the brain science (information processing theory) of learning and physics pedagogies.
ABCs of How We Learn: E is for Elaboration
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ABCs of How We Learn: E is for Elaboration

Marianna Ruggerio4 Comments

The Information Processing Model for memory is an incredibly important foundation for establishing much of the what and how around teaching strategies.

We begin with the sensory input… the words on this page, the hum of my air conditioning, the sound of my typing, the sound of my husband reading to my son, the motorcycle that just passed by. The edge of my sleeve is a bit damp from washing my face a few minutes ago which feels a bit tight and needs moisturizer and my foot itches. All of these are inputs into my sensory memory, and my brain makes decisions about what I will attend to. I will typically ignore most of the sensations as I’m writing in order to focus on the task at hand. The words that I’m writing, and where I plan do go with this post are living in my short term memory. Meanwhile, I am simulaneously retrieving knowledge from my long term memory about this topic, while also reviewing certain details and aspects so I can correctly quote them here. Writing this post requires all parts of my memory: working, long term, retrieval and rehearsal.

The same is true when students are engaged in the learning process, and it is something we must be particularly attuned to.

When we learn something new and we have a way to connect it to prior knowledge, we are engaging in elaboration which provides us with some additional pathways to access when the time comes to retrieve the information.

I recall when I was taking AP psychology and the teacher warned us that the biopsych unit was often difficult for students due to the amount of vocabulary required. I can also still recall the various ways in which I attempted to elaborate in order to remember the terms we were given. For example, I can still retrieve that the cerebellum is responsible for fine motor movements and balance. My elaboration? It’s the cere-BELLE-um and Belle was a beautiful and graceful dancer.

Making connections like this is one way we can elaborate. For example, I will tell my students they can remember that a CONcave is also known as a CONverging mirror. Many of us are familiar with remembering that velocity is a vector while speed is a scalar. Velocity vs speed is often the first place we make the distinction between vector and scalar quantities and they convienently start with the same letters.

But elaboration does not need to be confined to definitions. We use elaboration in science classrooms quite often if we are asking our students how, why and making connections! This is referred to as elaborative interrogation. Elaborative interrogation is about asking questions to make those connections between ideas.

One of the features of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) I found truly appealing is the use of the textbook. Unlike a traditional textbook, Etkina’s Exploring and Applying Physics engages readers with the experiments which were hopefully conducted in class and the text is meant to elaborate on those experiences. Additionally, students are expected to engage in an interrogation of the text, which then becomes elaborative interrogation. Rather than passively reading, students are taught to read the text by asking questions about the claims, “why is this true” seeing if the reasoning makes sense, and actively connecting the material to what was presented in class. It is also teaching students to behave like scientists because this is the way in which a scientist would read an article or paper while making a discerning judgement about the content they are reading.

I recently heard an eduinfluencer make the claim that teachers can only name and describe 3 evidence based strategies they use in their classroom. Challenge accepted. Each day I’m working through the book The ABCs of How We Learn and pairing a strategy with physics content/activities in my classroom.

Activities · Science of Learning

ABCs of How We Learn: D is for Deliberate Practice

Marianna Ruggerio2 Comments

Deliberate practice is what kicked off this whole series. I did a deliberate practice exercise last Friday as part of my AP Review in which we focused on graph linearization on the AP FRQs. I was so excited about it I decided to write about it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve intentionally paired an activity in my classroom with deliberate practice. I’ve also paired it with the Building Thinking Classrooms strategy using Mild, Medium and Spicy problems.

Deliberate practice is defined as applying focused and effortful practice to develop specific skills and concepts beyond one’s current ability.

The analogies to interests and hobbies abound. Running drills in sports to get body mechanics just right, Hanon finger exercises to help with piano dexterity, or point coordination exercises to improve hand-eye coordination and drawing with your shoulder.

These drills are rarely exciting, often frustrating but so necessary to move to the next level. In other words, they are focused and effortful!

The challenge with students (or anyone really) is that students tend to practice the things they are already good at. The challenge for teachers is that if we want students to engage in deliberate practice to improve their skills, we have to get them focused in on what they are really struggling with, and we know that’s not going to feel great.

AP classroom has recently made deliberate practice really east for educators. You can log into your AP classroom, go to Reports, then Content & Skills Performance. Then you can “generate practice quiz” in which you can make selections for content and/or skill based on the student level of performance. I’ve found this to be a really valuable tool this year to help my students focus in on that deliberate practice.

Another great example of a resource for deliberate practice are the Physics Classroom concept checkers. I’ve shared some of my written companions for these assignments which provide students some of the scaffolding they need to build that particular skill set.

I recently heard an eduinfluencer make the claim that teachers can only name and describe 3 evidence based strategies they use in their classroom. Challenge accepted. Each day I’m working through the book The ABCs of How We Learn and pairing a strategy with physics content/activities in my classroom.

ABCs of How We Learn: C is for Contrasting Cases
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ABCs of How We Learn: C is for Contrasting Cases

Marianna Ruggerio1 Comment

Contrasting cases is about noticing the difference between two or more examples that seem the same at a glance.

That core learning mechanic should absolutely scream physics problems to you!

Acceleration is a FANTASTIC example of the benefit of contrasting cases. Students frequently come to us believing the following to be true:

  • “Acceleration” describes speeding up only
  • “Positive acceleration” describes speeding up while “negative acceleration” describes slowing down
  • “If an object’s velocity is zero, its acceleration must be zero because it has stopped”

How do we help unlodge these incomplete conceptions in our physics students? If we could “just tell them” then it wouldn’t be a problem. However, these ideas are engrained deeply in students, and they need another way to approach the idea.

In the Investigative Science Learning Curriculum students conduct several observational experiments using a bowling ball. We drop a mark (bean bag for example) at equal time intervals as the ball rolls. Students copy the resulting pattern and then construct motion maps. This is how we begin to make sense of velocity change, acceleration and force.

The contrasting cases, in this instance, are the diagrams themselves.

Through a simple series of activities, we can build the ideas that constant velocity is not the absence of force, but the absence of an unbalanced force. Accelerations happen due to unbalanced forces and the direction of the acceleration is the direction of the unbalanced force.

We do a similar task shortly thereafter with an object that is accelerated vertically. When I review the material, I specifically grab the set of activities shown below. In the top two cases, the bob is experiencing upward motion. However, we see the change in velocity is different due to the difference in accelerations.

Next, I have students compare the top and bottom experiement (4 and 6). In both of these instances the delta v (acceleration) is directed upwards, however these both describe two very different motions, up and speeding up, and down while slowing down).

Again, while I could certainly just tell them, there is a lot more power to students constructing the diagrams based on their observations and then we can look for patterns and we can look at the fine details in contrasting cases. We can then use these details in the contrasting cases to more deeply understand the concept. We are also doing something incredibly critical for our students in the science classroom. We are teaching them to argue with evidence. That their answers and assumptions about how the world works need to be grounded in evidence over feeling and intuition. I would argue that fact is far more important than any piece of content they remember 10 years from now.

I recently heard an eduinfluencer make the claim that teachers can only name and describe 3 evidence based strategies they use in their classroom. Challenge accepted. Each day I’m working through the book The ABCs of How We Learn and pairing a strategy with physics content/activities in my classroom.

ABCs of How We Learn: B is for Belonging
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ABCs of How We Learn: B is for Belonging

Marianna Ruggerio3 Comments
Alumni Speak with current junior students, Fall 2023

In the physics world there is a sizable body of research on belonging in physics, and another related body on how that belonging relates to success. Women continue to be underrepresented in physics and so this has been of particular interest to me. As my career progressed I began to understand more deeply the true weight of belonging in physics as it relates to so many different positionalities.

One of the most critical contributors to persistence in STEM is a STEM identity, and that identity is a collection of factors and includes belonging. Threats to belonging include stereotype threat and imposter syndrome, but recognition is one of the strongest mitigating factors. In short, when I think of belonging, I think of two complementary parts: creating a space where students can see themselves as scientists by seeing others like them as scientists, and secondly opportunities for recognition from both myself and peers.

I think most teachers might lump this into “building relationships” with students, but creating a classroom of belonging requires true effort and intentionality.

This is a difficult post to write succinctly, as it could easily be several books worth of content and materials, so I’ll share some of the activities that link directly to belonging.

Early on in the school year I implement STEPUPs Physics Careers Lesson in which students take a short survey and then are “matched” with people who have a degree in physics but do a whole variety of jobs. The critical component of this lesson is where students build their own bio imagining they completed a physics degree prior to their job of choice. I’ve also taught lessons from the Underrepresentation Curriculum Project so we can speak directly to the problems and stereotypes in physics.

During COVID I got the idea of “identity encounters” where students watched a video interview of a contemporary physicist from an underrepresented group talk about their work, success and challenges.

I really like Kelly OShea’s “Being Smart in a Physics Class“. This year, not only did I have students shout each other out, but I read these aloud for students in class.

Using plenty of activities with low floor, high ceiling and multiple entry points are also a way to ensure the content-specific activities are designed in such a way that anyone can belong. A good example of these activities include cart sorts, but along that note I also firmly believe that physics curriculum such as the Modeling curriculum and the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) are critical contributors to belonging as well. When students are simply asked to find patterns based on carefully crafted observational experiments, we provide students opportunities to see for themselves that they are capable as scientists.

While our content is important to us, we miss the opportunity for the deepest and longest lasting gains in our students if we neglect our students’ sense of belonging.

ABCs of How We Learn in Physics: Analogy
Activities · Science of Learning

ABCs of How We Learn in Physics: Analogy

Marianna Ruggerio2 Comments

Shortly after completing my MEd I was asked to teach the intro to educational psychology course at Rockford University. The course had recently been redesigned to focus on cognitive psychology and the science of learning. Eager, I looked around for other models at various institutions and reached out to a few collegues. One of whom referred me to the book “The ABCs of How We Learn.” It’s a wonderful and digestable text that goes into the research, provides some examples and good/bad uses of each strategy.

At a recent institute day the keynote speaker shared that in his personal research he found that, on average, teachers could only name and accurately describe three strategies they use in the classroom. So, here’s my challenge to myself: 26 strategies and 26 direct applications to the physics classroom.

A is for Analogy

What makes an analogy? Can you name one in physics? God please not the water pump as a circuit example. An analogy is where two examples have the same deep structure. Analogy then becomes a valuable tool for helping novices begin to pay attention to deep vs surface structures.

There are two ways in which we use analogies. The first is the one you are probably thinking of when you consider analogy… the water pump for a circuit, or lanes of traffic to explain what happens to current in series vs. parallel. As teachers I think we use these examples readily in the classroom as we make abstract ideas more concrete.

There is, however, an additional way to use analogy and that is by taking two or more examples and asking students to identify what about those examples is similar. I noticed that my students this year were having a more difficult time that my previous students making this leap. Have your students ever said to you “but you never taught us this problem!” or “you need to show us more problems!”. It’s not really the number of problems, it’s really a transferrence and deep structure problem. Students are not recognizing that the problem at hand is, indeed, the same problem.

To address this I decided to set up a two-for-one cognitive strategy task (document here). First, I asked students to retrieve the worked example from the previous day. In the first instance of this task I asked them to retrieve the derivation for the moment of inerta of a rod about its end. Next, I provided students with a similar, but different problem.

For this first task I felt the problem was almost too similar, but their hesitation proved otherwise. The task was to derive the moment of inertia for a triangular rod about its end where the linear mass density was provided as a function of position. (see below)

However, what I asked students to do first was to identify what about this problem was similar and different to the previous problem. After they took a stab at this we regrouped so we could discuss what I was looking for. It is similar in that it’s the rotational inertia of a rod-like object about its end. It’s different in that the linear mass density is non-uniform and is a function. Then students executed the task. As we moved through the rest of the rotation unit (where analogies abound!) this became my go-to phrase! “Before you begin, what is similar and different to what you’ve seen before?”

AP Review Activity: Skill Blitz (Linearization)
In My Class Today · Teaching Methods

AP Review Activity: Skill Blitz (Linearization)

Marianna Ruggerio4 Comments

One of the struggles this year with my students has been linearization. Maybe it’s because I ditched Unit 0: Linearization because I wanted them to enjoy physics instead of getting bogged down in the math. Maybe it’s because I was panicking that their skills, overall, weren’t where I wanted them to be. Maybe it’s because unlike in previous years, this group of students were unable to transfer the skills from the labs to FRQs. Either way, I had a clear problem on my hands and I needed to solve it. So I decided to do a skill blitz.

I went through old AP FRQs and settled on the lab FRQ from 2011, 2018, 2025, 2015 and 2005. I printed the page with the data table only on different colored paper for each year. Then I gave students a document with the following table (full doc here):

Students are asked to do the derivation, state the axis labels, the slope and then whatever algebra, if necessary, to obtain the necessary value.

When students believe they’ve completed the task, I come check their work. If it’s correct they go obtain the next problem. If it’s incorrect I provide some feedback/clues and they continue.

In hindsight, I should have provided the 2018 problem first, so what happened was this. I gave them 10-15 minutes to grapple with the 2011 problem. After a while and noticing students were spinning their wheels, I went ahead and walked them through the problem. Then I let them get started on the next one. Once they got started they were on a roll. I realized during class that I had actually managed to select 5 problems that also represented the entire scope of the course!

I wanted students focused on speed and accuracy. They were allowed to use notes, but obviously that could slow them down (and wasn’t overly helpful with this particular task). First group to complete all 5 tasks gets to pick treats for when we watch Interstellar next week!

I’m thinking about how I might do this blitz with the other styles of questions. Maybe for continued review next week. We shall see!

Paper Companion Activities for Pivot Interactives
Activities · Teaching Methods

Paper Companion Activities for Pivot Interactives

Marianna Ruggerio2 Comments

You know how I feel about online work! (Looking for Physics Classroom Companion Worksheets? Find them Here!)

When I took high school physics almost everything was online. From physics classroom assignments, to the dreaded WebAssign, it was online. And because it was online, I like others, gamed the system (pre chat GPT). You know a certain number is going to show up somewhere in the answers? Enter it in all the blanks for the first submission so you can focus on the actual calculations. On the flip side was the part where you tried the problem so many times by the time you got it right you had no idea what actually worked. For the better part of my career I’ve been vehemently against all forms of online homework. There’s something about that screen that just puts a stop to the idea of using scratch paper for novice learners and we can’t have that!

(For what it’s worth, when AP went all digital I did NOT feel the urge to go digital in my classroom. I continued to do everything on paper. When APs came around I found my goal was acheived: I proctored the macro exam and did a count. 80% of physics students were using their scratch paper during the exam, while only 30% of non-physics students used their paper.)

The first exception I made to online learning was Pivot Interactives. I was using Peter’s work back when they were “Direct Measurement Videos” which meant I had paper copies originally, anyway. As Pivot upped their game (including deep randomization and autograding) I started using some of these assignments since it sure made my life easier!

However, what I’m finding with my students this year is that like my Webassign days, students are doing the minimum to get all the green checks. This looks like not reading the prompts that explain what they’re about to do next and why, not actually collecting the data for the graph and totally missing the connections between the sample measurements and the data collection.

So, I’ve started to reimplement some paper versions.

The Activities: A Journey of Trial and Error

Earlier this year I assigned the helmet collisions activity. I added a prompt at the end that requested students to do the following:

  • What was the purpose of the activity?
  • Describe the procedure for conducting the investigation
  • Describe the calculations you made and why we made each calculation. You should include details regarding your values!
  • Describe what we learned from this activity about helmets as it relates to the impulse-change in momentum relationship.

This was ok, but I, arguably did this a bit hastily. I realized I wanted these documents handwritten and maybe a bit more depth/scaffholding.

A few weeks later I assigned the Explosions (Not Really) activity.

I knew that students would totally ditch all of the methods we had been using, so I decided to give them a paper to complete before the activity that related to the activity. This required them to complete the calculations with similar, but easy numbers and then have me check their work prior to the activity. This got a good chunk of kids on board, but some still struggled with the transference.

Still not completely satisfied, this past week I assigned the “Intro to Transverse Waves” activity. In this activity students are going to linearize a graph. This is a skill we don’t really cover in my regular level physics, but I like doing it at this point in the year because it’s such a powerful tool. As I anticipated, many students were ignoring the text about linearization completely. I chose a different approach to the paper copy.

I gave students this document which contains the following prompts:

First, I asked them to describe to me some of the new vocab as well as how we obtained our measurements

Next, I use a modified template from the Patterns Curriculum when students write conclusions in labs where we have graphs. It looks like this:

After investigating the behavior _______________, I conclude that there is a ______________________relationship between the [independent variable name]  and the [dependent variable name] As the [independent variable] kept increasing, the [dependent variable]_____________________________. This system of a ___________________ can be mathematically modeled as:

[write the final equation]

where the constant  [slope value]  is the [description of slope for this experiment] . 

I require students to write the ENTIRE paragraph from start to finish. This is not a fill in the blank activity.

This is currently my favorite interaction of the paper follow up and I’ll probably build more of these moving forward. I’m really in love with the patterns physics conclusions because it really requires students to put everything together.

Grading

I’ve noticed there’s a VERY strong correlation on these summaries between students who took the activity seriously and learned from it, vs students who did not. Because of this, the only thing I really need to grade with care is the conclusion paragraph itself. If students did the lab correctly, this paragraph looks great. If not, they usually don’t do well on this.

Do you do anything like this? What does it look like? How do you support genuine learning using online platforms?

Teaching Students How to Score Better
Activities · Classroom Issues · In My Class Today

Teaching Students How to Score Better

Marianna Ruggerio2 Comments

At the American Association of Physics Teachers Winter Meeting I had the privilege of presenting in literally the best session of the entire conference (no bias here at all). Magically, all four of our presentations beautifully complimented one another and related deeply to engaging students in metacognitive skills.

I transitioned districts this year. In my previous district I worked with a lot of students in the gifted program, a lot of students in the creative and performing arts program (who are basically also gifted) and within this culture and climate, all kids benefitted, even the ones who were not in a special program. For years I was able to get students on board with the Expert Game, and the Science of Learning Physics some trust in the process, and good relationships. This year, that hasn’t quite cut it. I’d been thinking about a way to somehow “teach” students in a way that feel like “teaching” to them about how to learn, study and grow so they might buy into the idea (which is really nothing new).

I had been digging back into Powerful Teaching and some kind of workshop was begining to materialize, albeit very, very fuzzy. And then, at Winter Meeting, Aaron Titus gets up and shares that he offers a “How to Do Better on the Test” workshop which turns out to be “How to Learn”

The workshop is grounded in the work of Dr. Saundra McGuire. There are a lot of resources of hers around the web, like this lecture here on metacognition, but primarily she has a sweet little book called Teach Yourself How to Learn. It’s short, sweet, to the point and a lot of fun to read. Dr. McGuire is a retired chemistry professor and Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success. She is also an awardee of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Mentorship.

Immediately in chapter one she discusses one of the aspects about college that is hardest for students: getting As and Bs in high school often comes down to memorization and regurgitation. Now, before you come with fire I know that many of us (especially if we teach AP, and definitely if you enjoy my blog) are making students do incredible things. But I also know that you can probably name more than a handful of colleagues who don’t push their students beyond memorization. Teachers who produce study guides that are basically a carbon copy of the exam. Exams that are almost all multiple choice and the math is strictly plug and chug. The dreaded triangle to “support” students doing equations like F=ma. And if not the teachers themselves, some really great high school students simply don’t get pushed beyond needing to simply show up to class to learn the information. They can get away with minimal to no homework and no studying and still do okay in the class because we see them every single day and they work hard in our rooms.

So the workshop starts by introducing students to Bloom’s Taxonomy and we have a conversation about what level they are operating at most of the time, compared to what level they need to operate at for AP Physics. What level do they think they need to operate at in college?

And sure enough, if you pull up the science practices and skills for AP the word “create” is literally all over the place. The top of the pyramid.

From here we took a look at a recent exam question. First I asked them a simple question:

Which of the following is true about work?

  1. Work is effort
  2. Work is a change in energy
  3. Work is a force

They all know the answer. And this is a recall answer.

Then I showed them the exam question (they did really poorly on). While the question fundamentally was about the fact that work is a change in energy, what they were asked to do was apply the concept of taking an integral to calculate work and then create a graphical representation.

From here we discussed the differences between studying and learning and posed the question, “which would you work harder for? To study to get an A on a test, or prepare to teach the material to the class?”

The latter half of the workshop is about sharing strategies for doing homework, reading the text, and using practice exams. (You can find all of these in Dr. McGuire’s work and resources!)

I summarized some of these along with my personal favorites into the following list:

  • When you get home from school, write down everything you can remember from class that day, then compare with your class notes to identify/fill the gaps
  • Did you solve some problems? Grab a clean sheet of paper and solve the problem again. Compare to the example and make notes regarding your forgetting/gaps
  • Create a concept map to tie together big ideas and conceptual details
  • Make “teacher notes” as if you were preparing to teach the material
  • Aim for 100% mastery when you sit to study, not 85-90

As we wrapped up, the most important part of this workshop was asking students to make a commitment to do something different in the next 24 hours. I had students submit these along with some additional reflections. There were two that stood out to me today. One student reflected, “The reason this class is so challenging for me is because I haven’t had a class besides maybe Calc that required me to be at that creating level.”

A second student made an observation that knocked me over in joy:

“Physics is more than just who is smarter and has the ability to think at a higher level.”

And with that, I’m signing off. I’m going to attach my version of the slides, but everything is very much thanks to the work of Aaron Titus and Saundra McGuire.

Waves Intro Activity with Virtual Ripple Tank
Activities · In My Class Today

Waves Intro Activity with Virtual Ripple Tank

Marianna RuggerioLeave a comment

When I was in college my E&M professor introduced me to the falstad apps. It was literally this guy who created a bunch of different JAVA sims. E&M is notoriously challenging due to needing to think and reason in three-dimensional space, so we were encouraged to use the apps to help us visualize static fields.

When I started teaching I decided to poke around and see what else Falstad had created. One of his simulations I use year over year is his ripple tank. It’s incredibly powerful and way less cumbersome than setting up the actual water tables (which was just unfeasible being the only physics teacher with 3 preps)

I just finished my intro activity today so I figured I might as well share. You can find the simulations here.

When the app opens it’s pretty simple. A “faucet” wave like the one in the Phet sim is present. You can see the sliders to adjust for damping and frequency. You can move the source where ever you like and can even toggle into 3D view

What’s pretty awesome is the list of “examples” you can select from the drop down menu.

Single slit, double slit, two-sources, refraction, total internal reflection and a whole slew of topics. You also have complete freedom to add to the simulation using the “add” menu bar at the top.

For my students, we start our waves unit in the following way.

First, we watch the slo mo guys film this ginormous 90 foot wave... with ducks…. which is awesome.

There’s a lot of really great phenomena here. From constructive interference, to refraction and lenses (pay attention to the grid image in the column) to the idea that waves transport energy, not matter.

Next, students head to the sim. I provide them directions on this document and the record their observations on this one.

This activity typically takes a class period and a half. For my advanced students they can usually finish in a class period or I can assign the rest for homework.

When students return the following day, I put this graphic organizer up and prompt them to write their own definition of the behavior based on their observations and a diagram to go with it

During the unit I come back to this app quite often.

We discuss how the design of an auditorium is based on nodal lines

I can drag the single source around to demonstrate doppler effect and sonic booms

If there’s a phenomena I want students to be able to observe, pause and manipulate… there’s usually a way to do it.

Written Companions for Physics Classroom Practice
Activities

Written Companions for Physics Classroom Practice

Marianna Ruggerio4 Comments

The Physics Classroom holds a place near and dear to my heart.

For years I thought it was my special secret. Long, long ago the url was something like physicsclassroom.glenbrook225.k12.il.us because it was a site hosted on my High School’s sever. The main author was Tom Henderson, one of the best educators at GBS. Tom taught the most advanced freshman in chem-phys, as well as the conceptual physics course. He had a great handle on meeting kids where they were at and explaining physics in a way that made sense as a student.

It wasn’t until much later I realzied that physics classroom was a well known resource for physics teachers across the nation.

As a student, something I realized was that what I found fun, challenging and helpful to my learning in physics was often a barrier and frustration to my classmates. Getting an “O Drats” without a way or opportunity to reflect or see where an error was made became maddening and frustrating. At the same time the essence of drilling a tiny skill is so valuable for long term learning.

I steered clear of most online homeworks for a long, long time (webassign also traumatized me). I knew that too often the real work that needed to happen to actually learn was skipped by most students in search of elusive green checks. By the time you got the checks, you had no memory of what actually worked.

Over the last few years I’ve started developing handouts to go along with some of the physics classroom activity sets. I only have a few, but enough that I feel like they are worth sharing publicly at this point. The goal is to get students thinking, writing and documenting as they work through the physics classrom activities. It also provides me with documentation. I will admit, another motivation for this was the fact that I did not have a paid subscription to task tracker. Now that I do, I’m developing more of these and will continue to share and post them here as I develop them.

What I’ve found is that more students are able to move through more problems with more success and confidence. Definitely a win! They hate me for slowing them down with the paper documentation, but I see it as a win.

Without further ado, here is the list:

Kinematics

Purchase my kinematics pack here

I ask students to first describe the motion in words. This way, when they watch the little car drive across the screen and make the dot diagram, they know what they are looking for

Kinematics Calculator Pad Sets

In the paper document, students are prompted to make their picture, their chart of variables and solve the problem by selecting an equation then substituting values as needed. This is a second version (sample below) that is specific to set 12, and provides more room for student work.

Momentum

Concept Checker: Case Studies Impulse and Force

The first few pages of this document are notes in which we construct the momentum bar charts for different situations and identify what is the same and different. Then students go to the concept checker and I ask them to create the bar charts and document the similarities/differences prior to making their selections. A preview is below and here is the handout

Work and Energy

This document can be used for the calcpad sets. I ask students to draw a picture, construct a bar chart, and solve the problem starting with conservation of energy. Preview below

Waves

Open Tube Concept Builder (can be used for closed tubes as well)

Document here, preview below