Phys 3071W.001

[pic] |Spring 2012 Mondays and Wednesdays Section 1: 9:05 - 12:05 Section 2: 12:20 - 3:20 STSS 131 A Final Exam: May 10, 18:30-21:30 PM, Location to be announced | |COURSE INFORMATION: PHYSICS 3071W PHYSICS FOR (FUTURE) ELEMENTARY TEACHERS (PET)

This syllabus, suitably revised as necessary, is posted on the class web page: http://www.physics.umn.edu/courses/ INSTRUCTOR:

Section 1: Nancy Bresnahan Office: Physics 165 624-7592 bresnahan@physics.umn.edu Section 2: Steve Brehmer Office: Physics 165 624-7592 brehmer@physics.umn.edu

Teaching Assistants: Section 1: Nhou Xiong xiong463@umn.edu Molly McFadden mcfad050@umn.edu

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 related to the ideas 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. This includes realizing 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 understand the thinking of elementary school children by observing (via video) and analyzing their discourse when they are in the process of learning science. (4) Learning about learning: To help you become more aware of how your own science 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. 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 and TAs as guides. 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 chapters:

Chapter 1: Interactions and Energy Chapter 2: Interactions and Forces Chapter 3: Interactions and Systems Chapter 4: Model of Magnetism Chapter 5: Electric Circuit Interactions Chapter 6: Light Interactions

The goal of each chapter is to have you develop a set of ideas that can be used to help explain phenomena that will be explored within that chapter, as well as to consider issues of learning science. There are three types of homework and activities within each chapter. The first several activities are called /Developing Ideas/ activities. During these you will perform experiments to collect evidence in support of ideas that you will develop. The final activity in a Chapter is an /Applying Ideas/ activity. In that activity you will compare your ideas with those developed by scientists, then apply the ideas to explain interesting phenomena. Sprinkled throughout the curriculum are a series of /Learning About/ /Learning/ activities, some done during class, most done for homework. During these LAL activities you are asked to think about your own learning, the learning of children and/or the learning of scientists.

STRUCTURE OF THE PET ACTIVITIES:

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

/Purpose/ This is 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/ These are 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's where you do the experiments and record your predictions, observations and data that provide the evidence to support, refine and/or revise your ideas.

/Summarizing Questions/ Working together, the whole class will try to summarize what they have learned in the activity by answering questions.

REQUIRED MATERIALS: TEXT: Physics & Everyday Thinking, by Fred Goldberg, Steve Robinson, and Valerie Otero (Publisher: It's About Time, Armonk, NY, 2008)

This is a workbook style text with space for you to record your observations, and homework pages that you will complete and submit for grading. The PET Student Resources CD is included with the text. This CD includes electronic versions of all the homework assignments (in Microsoft Word), plus several QuickTime movies of elementary school students performing science activities. These movies are part of a set of special Learning about Learning homework assignments to be assigned periodically during the semester.

This workbook contains the first six chapters listed above. In addition, there will be some supplementary material provided throughout the course. You must bring the PET textbook to every class.

GRADING CRITERIA:

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TENTATIVE GRADING SCALE: >96% A+ (recorded as A in University records) >92% A >88% A- >84% B+ >80% B >76% B- >72% C+ >68% C >64% C- >60% D+ >56% D Note that the cut-off between each step will not be set at a higher level than the above, but it may be lowered.

FOR S/N GRADE OPTION: A course grade of S requires the equivalent of a course grade of C- or above. INCOMPLETES: Incomplete coursework is a major inconvenience for students and instructors. You are expected to do everything in your power to avoid this situation. Legitimate excuses include verified illnesses and family emergencies. No incompletes will be given unless you have a prior written agreement with the course instructor, including an approved plan for completion of the work. EXPECTATIONS:

1. Homework (HW) 2. Workbook entries 3. Examinations: Four one-hour quizzes Final exam 4. Writing Assignments: Learning Commentary (1) Physics Ideas (1) 5. Attendance and participation

HOMEWORK: Activity homework will be assigned almost every class period and, unless otherwise stated, must be turned in at the beginning of the next class. Children's Ideas assignments will be due one week after assigned. Sometimes the homework will be reviewed and discussed during the class period when it is due. /This is a Writing Intensive course. Your homework/ /answers should consist of complete sentences with correct grammar/. Late homework will not be accepted for credit. Several homework assignments will require you to run computer simulations on the web. The PET simulator index page is at http://cpucips.sdsu.edu/petsims. Many of the assignments will require you to have access to a computer connected to the internet. If you do not have one at home, there are several computer labs on campus. The Children's Ideas homework assignments are more extensive. They will require you to view QuickTime movies of children from grades two through five discussing physics ideas or participating in experiments. 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. We will spend class time discussing the children's learning during the periods when the Children's Ideas assignments are due. The movies and their transcripts are found on the CD that comes with your text. The contents of the CD can also be found at www.petpset.net.

WORKBOOK ENTERIES:

It is your responsibility to record observations and answer questions in the workbook. Your entries should be sufficiently clear and legible that you can return to them weeks later and understand them. Moreover, some of your entries will be photocopied and used by you as evidence in a writing assignment, and so they must be understandable to the grader of that assignment. We will occasionally check your workbook during class to be sure that your entries are complete, clear and legible.

EXAMINATIONS: There will be five examinations during the semester: four quizzes and a final test. Each will be given after the completion of one or more of the chapters: . Quiz 1 Chapter 1 February 8 . Quiz 2 Chapter 2 February 29 . Quiz 3 Chapters 3 & 4 April 4 . Quiz 4 Chapters 5 & 6 May 2 . Final Exam Comprehensive May 10 (You will be notified in advance of changes because of revisions in the schedule.) The quizzes will be approximately 60 minutes long; the final exam will be three hours long.

Note that NO MAKE-UP examinations will be given, /except/ in the case of certain University-sanctioned activities which are officially exempted from this policy (primarily designated intercollegiate competition; check to be sure). If you are exempt, you must notify the instructor well in advance, with official documentation, and make arrangements for making up the exam or taking the exam while away.

If an exam is missed for a valid, documented reason, you must schedule a MAKE-UP exam with your instructor on the day of your return. Valid, excused absences include illnesses which prevent attendance (documented by a physician or equivalent), funerals (documented by dated notice), and car break-downs (documented by an auto repair or tow service). If in doubt, ask.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS (2):

Physics 3071W is a writing intensive course and part of your grade is based on your writing. In addition to the writing in homework and exams, there are two writing assignments as described below. The University provides resources to help you with writing. Information on the Center for Writing can be found at: http://writing.umn.edu/sws/index.htm

The student writing guide can be found at: http://writing.umn.edu/docs/sws/swgpdf.pdf

We do check for plagiarism. You can find resources to help avoid plagiarism at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_plagiar.html . A good set of definitions and descriptions of plagiarism can be found in http://writing.umn.edu/tww/plagiarism/definitions.html 1. Learning Commentary (LC) - assigned February 27, due March 21 The LC is designed to help you become more aware of and more in control of your own learning.

This paper will be done at the end of Chapter 2 and will be based on ideas about force and motion. A detailed description will be handed out later. The evaluation of these commentaries will be based both on the quality and quantity of your comments, and the degree to which you provide evidence to support your comments. In particular, we will be looking for a description of two initial ideas (with supporting evidence), a substantive discussion of how various classroom activities promoted a change in these ideas (with supporting evidence), and a brief description of the final, class consensus ideas. Most credit will be assigned to the middle part (how the ideas changed). Opportunities will be given for peer review and revision.

2. Physics Ideas - assigned March 21, due April 23

This paper is designed to allow you to research how a particular idea in physics or a related field developed. You will have the opportunity to investigate the Nature of Science and Scientists Ideas in more detail than our text. The assignment will be graded on correct physics, clear explanations and correct writing style. A first draft will be due approximately two weeks before the final paper is due, giving you an opportunity to revise and improve your paper. A more detailed description will be handed out later.

ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION: Attendance - This is a cooperative learning environment involving small group activities as well as full class discussions. Your active participation is essential to the success of the class for everyone. Because you will play such an important role in your own learning /and/ the learning of your classmates, your attendance is essential, and hence we have a rather strict attendance policy. At a minimum, you are expected to be in class and working for the full three hours, /i.e./, arriving late and leaving early will not be permitted without penalty (we will have a short, 10-15 minute break in the middle of class).

o Each unexcused late arrival or early departure will result in a 0.5 % reduction in your course grade.

o Each unexcused absence will result in a 1.5% reduction in your course grade.

o Absence is not excused without proper documentation (doctor's statement for illness; obituary or program of memorial, etc. for death in the family; and garage statement for a car break-down), or in the case of certain University-sanctioned activities which are officially exempted from this policy. Note that a family vacation is NOT an acceptable excuse - even if your whole family is going and it has been planned for a year.

NOTE: It is your responsibility to understand the material discussed in class. If you are absent, talk to your group members or your TA to clarify concepts you missed and to help complete the workbook assignment done in class that day.

Participation and Behavior Expectations - You will be primarily responsible for your own learning in this class. The instructors will seldom, if ever, "lecture" in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, you will do science and learn science through engagement in meaningful discussions with your lab partners, through active participation in class and group discussions and through performing experiments and simulations. Similar to the way in which scientists develop ideas, your ideas will be based on /evidence/ gathered from the experiments done by you. At appropriate times, you will be able to compare your ideas with those developed by scientists. It is expected that except for some special scientific terminology, the ideas you develop with the class should be quite similar to the scientists' ideas. You will develop and deepen your own understanding of some powerful ideas in physics. You will come to realize that these ideas can be used to explain a wide range of interesting scientific phenomena.

The University of Minnesota assumes that all students enroll in its programs with a serious learning purpose and expects them to be responsible individuals who demand of themselves high standards of honesty and personal conduct. All students are expected to behave at all times with the utmost respect and courtesy toward all of their fellow students and their instructors. Much of the class time is spent in discussions and we expect that students will challenge each other's ideas. This is an important part of the learning process. /Respectful language should always be used during/ /questions and discussions, and students should pay full attention to those/ /who are speaking/.

It is expected that students will not engage in any behavior that disrupts the classroom learning environment. This includes, but is not limited to, use of cell phones and use of the computers for non-class activities except during the mid-class break.

Lab groups will often finish activities before the entire class is ready to move on to the next activity. When that is the case with your lab group, you are expected to postpone moving on until the entire class is ready. Sometimes you will have a homework assignment that you can begin working on (on your own). Otherwise it would be good for you to have other material with you that you might work quietly on until the remainder of the class catches up. Once again, you should not engage in activity that disrupts the classroom learning environment.

This is a College of Science and Engineering course. The College of Science and Engineering Statement on Academic Integrity applies to any student enrolled in a course in this college: Academic integrity is essential to a positive teaching and learning environment. All students enrolled in University courses are expected to complete coursework responsibilities with fairness and honesty. Failure to do so by seeking unfair advantage over others or misrepresenting someone else's work as your own can result in disciplinary action.

The University Student Conduct Code defines scholastic dishonesty as follows: Scholastic Dishonesty: Scholastic dishonesty means plagiarizing; cheating on assignments or examinations; engaging in unauthorized collaboration on academic work; taking, acquiring, or using test materials without faculty permission; submitting false or incomplete records of academic achievement; acting alone or in cooperation with another to falsify records or to obtain dishonestly grades, honors, awards, or professional endorsement; altering forging , or misusing a University academic record; or fabricating or falsifying data, research procedures, or data analysis. Within this course, a student responsible for scholastic dishonesty can be assigned a penalty up to and including an "F" or "N" for the course. If you have any questions regarding the expectations for a specific assignment or exam, ask. You are also expected to abide the University of Minnesota Student Conduct Code, which can be found at http://www1.umn.edu/regents/policies/academic/Student_Conduct_Code.html or at the Office for Student Conduct and Academic Integrity (OSCAI): http://www1.umn.edu/oscai/ . Note that instructors are required to report violations of the Student Conduct Code to OSCAI. Further disciplinary actions that may result include suspension and expulsion. DISABILITIES It is University policy to provide, on a flexible and individualized basis, reasonable accommodations to students who have disabilities that may affect their ability to participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact their instructors to discuss their individual needs for accommodations.

DISCLAIMER The dates as listed on the syllabus as well as the order in which the material is covered are subject to change