AY 375 - Fall 2014: Fourth Day Lesson Plan

Today's class will be only an hour long, focusing on demos and lecturing/learning styles.

1. Strive to teach the same material in various ways.
2. Demonstrations are a great way to engage students, maintain interest, and show science-in-action.
3. Preparation is key.

Remind them that this is something we intend to do every week and that everyone should come prepared to share about how their previous sections went.

Open the floor up for general questions and sharing about how sections are going. Some questions include:

• What did you do?
• How did you implement your activities?
• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What would you do differently?
• How did you assess learning?
• Did you receive any unexpected questions/reactions/etc.?
• Did anything unexpected happen?
• What were you thinking about while you were running section? Any moments of panic?

Printable Version Here: DemosHandout

• Demo basics:
  • Demos are a great addition to a standard/dry worksheet.
  • Sometimes they actually do help elucidate concepts and students like doing “hands-on” experiments (this is a science class!).
  • As always, the EBRB is a great resource and has a page devoted to demos.
  • In addition, on a given topic's page in the EBRB, there should be listed any relevant demos.

• What makes a good demo?
  • Illustrating difficult physical concept(s)
  • Interactive: students can participate
  • A springboard to new topics
  • Straightforward: minimal risk of failure
  • Demo actually illustrates concept in question

• When demos go wrong:
  • Demos can and sometimes do FAIL!
  • Sometimes, especially in astronomy, they can confuse students more than help them or oversimplify a concept.
  • Materials may be missing or broken, so CHECK IN ADVANCE!

• Some of our favorite demos:
  • Remind everyone that most are written up in the EBRB and on the Resources handout (and wiki page)
  1. Arc lamps: Put high voltage through tubes of gas and look through diffraction gratings to see spectral lines. On the EBRB Light Blackbodies Spectral Lines and the Doppler Effect page, “under Line spectroscopy and arc lamp activities”.
     • Head GSIs will train GSIs, Ask Ay375 instructors if you need help.
     • Students like this one
     • Make sure the stuff is there if your section is early in the day.
     • Test it yourself and make sure you can see lines so you can help your students better.
  2. Warping of Spacetime: A 2D analogy using stretchy black fabric and balls/weights. No worksheets exist in the EBRB for this one, but feel free to make one!
  3. Celestial sphere, phases of the moon, seasons, orbits: Styrofoam balls, a lamp or flashlight, people getting up and moving around. Many worksheets go with these kinds of demos and can be found on the Demos page of the EBRB or on the Celestial Sphere, Gravity and Orbits, and Earth/Moon/Sun System pages of the EBRB.
     1. Retrograde motion (Discuss pitfalls)
     2. Day & night on Earth (circle up around a lamp and groups of 3)
     3. Lunar phases (balls on a sticks around a lamp and groups of 3)
     4. Seasons (circle up around a lamp)
     5. Lunar rotation and orbit (i.e. tidal locking) (one person orbits another with the Moon's arms outstretched)
  4. Parallax with your finger (very simple, “close one eye then the other” kind of thing)
  5. Doppler shift of sound (whirling a buzzer on a string)
  6. Class H-R diagram
  7. Stating in words, stating in math, drawing, and acting out Kepler's and/or Newton's Laws (can be done with a worksheet, or just have students take notes as each group presents their law)
  8. Donut/bagel on a string (though I'm sure profs will do it in class)
  9. Jumping on a chair with balls being thrown (though I'm sure profs will do it in class)
  10. (Rayleigh) Scattering of Light: Fill a fish tank with water and a couple drops of milk and shine a flashlight through it to show scattering of blue light and transmission of red light. On the EBRB Light Blackbodies Spectral Lines and the Doppler Effect page there's a worksheet called “Emission, Absorption, Scattering, and Nebulae” and one called “Scattering Demo.”
  11. Planetary Nebulae (and Limb Brightening and Optical Depth): use a Hoberman sphere covered in Christmas lights to show how spherical radiating clouds can appear ring-like. On the EBRB's Stellar Evolution page, there's a worksheet called 'Limb Brightening: “Hoberman Planetary Nebula” Demo.'
  • Physics has some, but it's kind of a pain to check them out, but some are good for section and some are good for full lecture.

Students were required to watch (1) a lecture from Alex Filippenko's C10 (Introductory to Astronomy) lectures on white dwarfs, binaries, and introduction to supernova, and (2) a freshman physics lecture from Walter Lewin at MIT on the Doppler effect. The instructors provided a worksheet to be filled out. Instructors will check to make sure this assignment has been completed.

Class discussion:

• General impression of the two lectures?
• Likes and Dislikes?
• What techniques and elements of style did you find engaging?
• Thinking about your experience as a student, what are some more techniques that were helpful and not helpful (and why).

Notes on videos:

• Both have quirky personalities, use a fair amount of humor > element of style which can help keep students interested
• Both intersperse demos and real-science examples throughout lectures > helps keep students engaged although it's unclear whether they always help to deepen students' understanding of the material

Lewin

• Does not provide recap at beginning of lecture or summary at the end.
• Generally very good board work (amazing diagrams) but sometimes he wanders in terms of where on the board he writes.
• At one point, a demo clearly seems to fail and he just says “I tried”. In some cases, it may be in the best interest of time to abandon a demo that is not working. However, pre-testing of demos can help mitigate their possible failure (for example, if he'd noticed the Doppler effect demo was difficult to hear, he could have maybe taped it, and played back the sound slowed down so that it would be more obvious how the sound changed as the pipe was moving towards and away from the audience).
• Often uses demos or observations as examples of what he has just explained. In some cases, it might be nice to use the demos to engender questions that are then answered in the lecture.
• At one point he seems to create possible misconception that Doppler effect for sound and EM waves are somewhat different; he seems to say the Doppler effect only works if the source is moving but not the receiver, while for EM waves it doesn't matter.
• Does not take questions from class and he asks very few questions, so in-class assessment of student learning doesn't happen.

Filippenko

• Takes questions from students and asks think-pair-share questions to do some in-class assessment.
• Does recap at beginning of lecture, but it is maybe a little long (5 min).
• Expresses a lot of personal excitement
• Shows many pretty pictures sometimes but without enough explanation of what they are (no scales, descriptions on slides either)
• Openly admits analogy is not that great but gives it anyway (and with great confidence).
• Small demos hard to see on the video and from the back of the class.

Takeaways:

1. Look at strengths and weaknesses of others so that we can better evaluate ourselves. Did you find ways of assessing your students' learning? How did you engage your students with the material (style: humor, quirkiness, techniques: using demos or data to elicit questions)? Do your activities relate to your learning objectives?
2. These people have won awards, and even they make mistakes. No one is perfect. There is always room to grow and learn. Be patient with yourself as a teacher.
3. In planning and evaluating your teaching, it can be helpful to put yourself in the shoes of your students. Would have enjoyed/been engaged with what was happening in section? Just keep in mind that students also learn in different ways and so diversifying your teaching techniques is good.

• Start thinking about your longer teaching prompts. You might start making some notes on the various topics to help you construct your longer entries.
• Visit your assigned peer GSI, have a chat afterwards, and fill out the worksheet. Bring the completed worksheet with you to class next week.
• Bring in a lesson plan you have used or plan to use next week.