Well that wasn't right ...

There are days when the demands on my time from obligations outside of my teaching responsibilities are too great. It means that I don't prep as much as I should, that I try to rush through things or that I default to talking too much. All of that happened this week. 

Monday, AP Physics needed to review an in-class problem set from Friday and their weekend "Opportunity for Physics Practice" aka OPP (suggested HW) and I felt rushed. I wanted to make sure they had time for an in-class practice problem of a different sort. Usually, when we review work they have completed individually or in small groups I'm still calling on students. They can help explain an answer that is already shown or be asked about some hypothetical that is related like "In this problem the force was up the incline but what if it was down instead?" I realized afterwards that I felt so rushed getting through the review that I hadn't included students in the conversation. It's not necessarily bad, depending on the difficulty of the problem, where the students are in understanding, etc., but it felt different. 

Today, even though I had looked over the plan that I had made for regular physics, it wasn't front of mind when I started the period which led to issues. I like to have my week planned out by the previous weekend, moving activities and assignments around based on the coming week. Even if the activity lands on the same day of the year (say day 29) that may not be the same day of the week. We have a modified block schedule so Monday, Tuesday and Friday I see all periods but Wednesday and Thursday we only see them once for a longer period. And then there are the other schedule issues like the fire drills, unplanned fire alarms, rallies, Senior Picnic, band field trips, etc. that means even more changes. Even though I start my week with my planning "done," I make tweaks. But this sense of being "done" can make me lazy. 

Today, I knew what we were going to do in Physics, I even opened everything out ahead of time. Students were going to solve a problem for their Daily Warm-up Question then we were going to do some additional problems based on the same information. Then we were going to do a simple activity of trying to drop a ball into a basket while we walked past it moving a constant speed. This would lead into some basic projectile notes, followed by some problem solving in groups on a whiteboard. Then students would get introduced to our air pressure rocket, we would go outside to collect data and back inside to calculate the launch velocity and max height. 

That was the plan. 

But I had a club meeting at lunch, and a fairly full study hall period. Despite my best laid plans, I forgot to do the additional problems for the warm-up. I decided not to take the ball and basket activity outside because it was hot. This meant they were cramped for space and they didn't walk very fast so they could drop the ball directly in the basket while being in line with it, instead of learning they had to drop it ahead of the basket so that it fell as a horizontal projectile into the basket. Or they stopped before running into something and didn't move at a steady velocity. This meant the "ah ha moment" I'd hoped for didn't happen. 

I wanted to get students outside before it got even hotter so after going through the brief notes and introducing the rocket, we went outside to launch it. As we came back inside to do the calculations, I realized we were going to wrap up early. Which is when I realized I had forgotten to do the whiteboard problems in between. We did the problems after our rocket calculations, which ended up being ok for pacing. 

But I had an answer wrong. When I solve problems that I ask students to do, I use my tablet and OneNote. Then I can reopen the same page year-to-year if I assign the same problems. I had briefly reviewed the answers to the problem set while lesson planning, mostly making sure that the content and difficulty matched the day's activity. I hadn't checked my answer. I should have. 

There was one problem about a dropped hammer that goes past a pair of windows. The question asked how the "increase in speed" of the hammer as it fell past the top window compared to the "increase in speed" as it fell past the second. Last year I must have read it as "rate of change of speed" because what I wrote out was all about the acceleration being the same. Luckily, I was explaining it (correctly) to a group of students when I realized I had the wrong answer in OneNote before I displayed it. 

But I still told students I had read it wrong. I think it's important to admit when you make a mistake. Students had been having great discussions about the question, arguing about their reasoning even if they agreed on how they compared. We talked about it all together which I think went well. 

So today didn't go as planned. Even though I had in fact planned it. But tomorrow I get another chance for the other class' block period. I won't forget the additional questions about their warm-up, we will go outside to have more space for our ball-basket activity, and we will remember the whiteboard problems before we launch the rocket. Fingers crossed.