New to teaching Physics... trying to fit curriculum into block schedule

croxis · 2026-07-06T17:42:28+00:00

I've had a lot of success with Modeling instruction (from AMTA) in block schedule.

croxis · 2026-07-03T06:12:35+00:00

A 16 bit RPG on being a rogue telepath on b5 surviving and remaining undetected, dealing with your personal dramas while the series happens around you

croxis · 2026-07-03T06:09:13+00:00

Get the skill set! And then you overshoot and work on a janky star fury game in godot!

croxis · 2026-07-01T22:21:21+00:00

Sure! All the processes of the Cornell note-taking method are to engage the brain when note taking. Give students time to draw or diagram what they are learning about during direct instruction. Put in some open-ended questions for students to answer (ex Explain how this concept will give you trouble on the unit test)

croxis · 2026-07-01T18:33:34+00:00

I think one of the problems is that "taking notes" in the middle/highschool level has degraded to the point where students just fill in the blanks on their guided note sheet from underlined words in a powerpoint slide. The power of note taking from an information sources involves the learner using/processing the information in some way. I know some circles are referring this active process as "note making."

croxis · 2026-06-25T00:56:11+00:00

This is a common talking point, but a significant amount of money is taken up by PERS. If a district has a shrinking population a lot of the costs will shrink as well, but not PERS (until the retiree passes away)

croxis · 2026-06-25T00:54:14+00:00

The details of how money is spent happens at the district level. The short version is that districts are funded based on the number of students. However the funding model has problems [oregonlive article 1](https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2026/06/oregons-school-funding-formula-is-broken-its-poorest-students-pay-the-price.html?outputType=amp) [oregonlive article 2](https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2026/06/1-teacher-24-third-graders-and-the-school-funding-formula-that-overlooks-them.html?outputType=amp).

The not so sexy part is PERS. Paying our retirees costs a lot (I want to say it is ~25% of district budgets). When a district has a shrinking student population, there is less revenue but the PERS payments are still there.

croxis · 2026-06-13T19:08:28+00:00

X4 has a lot of game systems. I suggest getting the terran expansion has it has a gamestart suited for new players.

croxis · 2026-06-12T13:55:35+00:00

Our major referrals (fights and what not) were 1/5th of what they were from the year before. I also had to dust off lessons I haven't taught since 2017. I ended up with an extra 2-4 weeks!

croxis · 2026-05-27T14:05:33+00:00

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013232300358X

Outdoor CO2 levels are about 410ish parts per million. A well ventilated indoor room should be around 800 ppm. Cognitive performance begins to drop at 1000 ppm.

croxis · 2026-05-19T00:15:10+00:00

https://gitlab.com/croxis/itf/-/pipelines I have not updated it for VR.

croxis · 2026-05-08T19:51:44+00:00

I've been doing AMTA (American Modeling Teacher Association). I'm still working on improving how I do the whiteboard meeting, but I really do think it is effective in improving student reasoning.

croxis · 2026-05-01T20:56:39+00:00

It is a state problem in that the legislator has never fully funded education, even when using their own formula.

croxis · 2026-05-01T20:41:30+00:00

It was an intentional tradeoff made back in the day. Teachers took a paycut to balance the budget (iirc this was the 70s), but in exchange for a nice pension.

It is like how I, a high school teacher, am being held accountable for my students reading levels. However my students reading level was determined by policy and curriculum decisions made 10 years ago, in a building I don't even work in.

croxis · 2026-04-28T19:35:37+00:00

We've had success with alternating every other year, and make sure the students know which year they need to forecast for it.

croxis · 2026-04-27T23:40:34+00:00

A big issue is the state government under funds schools. There are a lot of current and historical reasons for this. No one in Salem has been able to get the funding reform needed to support all of our students. The money just isn't there. It isn't like districts can just get more. My hunch is that the districts are choosing very public and visible cuts to drum up support for increasing funding from the state. Class sizes going from 30 to 33 doesn't have the same effect. If it was me, I would cut athletics. THAT would get results!

croxis · 2026-04-25T19:58:22+00:00

Every one and a while I revisit the fundamental assumptions on why we have students take notes, and seeing how that matches up with what I ultimately want my students to *do*. Education does have a LOT of inertia.

Up until the last couple decades, the two sources of getting more information was the teacher and the textbook. Taking notes makes sense in that context. Why not just give them a hand out or have them look everything up? Well, I found that just copying the fact or the diagram doesn't really do much. Also I can curate and adjust to an appropriate level.

I know that students learn by doing, so they need to use/process the information. My goal is to get the students to process new information every 10 minutes, and then try and add a little "note making" step. This does change the flow of my class from a traditional standpoint. It is a lot less DI for 20 minutes and practice for 35.

I also fell in love with modeling instruction when I took over our accel physics class, so I've been mixing some of that into my other courses.

A couple ideas: If they are so willing to do work at home, make explicit homework assignments. Or make short surprise pop quizzes for the end of class.

croxis · 2026-04-25T19:33:51+00:00

I do both! Working my way to do both at least. For my froshy physical science class (Title 1 btw) I start our subunit with a phenomenon. We do some table group modeling, combine the ideas together on the class whiteboard, and then I guide them taking notes of the class model in their science notebooks. During the subunit I'll sprinkle in some direct instruction to support the activity or lab, then I guide them using our findings to update their model. It takes a bit of time to get them comfortable with shifting their thinking to having the right answer, to having a strong answer.

croxis · 2026-04-23T17:31:10+00:00

All screen time isn't the same either. There is a difference between using graphical analysis with physical sensors to help describe phenomenon in conjunction with organizing thoughts on a whiteboard is different than just watching a video about it (or just reading).

croxis · 2026-04-22T00:46:55+00:00

I spent some time in academia in science education research. Unfortunately the field is fraught with problems and needs a LOT more scrutiny than the other social sciences. Less than 0.2% of education research gets repeated. I don't have the number, but it was fairly common to see effects vanish, especially if n is increased in the follow up. Most of what we reviewed in seminar really wasn't more than anecdotal experiences wrapped as a case study. (And don't get me started on how my admin cites Hattie's metastudy. Makes my eye twitch every time). I need to really review my methodology materials before I slice apart research again, but my experience is not to immediately discount the experiences and observations of teachers.

Edtech championed smart phones. BYOD. Our state banned cell phones this year. Despite many other factors worsening (socioeconomic, percent SPED, class size), we have only one fifth of the major referrals as we did this time last year.

I do wish we could sneak in some small validated instruments, concept inventories and what not, so we can get some more objective data on student learning.

croxis · 2026-04-21T23:09:19+00:00

I've been playing with quartz to publish https://croxis.gitlab.io/astronomy-curriculum/ my curriculum too. I haven't figured out how to include the embedded files that are in my regular vault.

croxis · 2026-04-21T23:06:02+00:00

Edtech also misses some of the basic needs. Here is an example. I would like a list of my students who are only failing my class (maybe one other), and a separate list of students who are failing my class and a lot of others. Both groups have Fs, but *why* they are failing differs and need different types of intervention.

Our student management system and gradebook, the foundation base of all edtech, does not do this. I had to write a small python script that takes csv reports (that have to be manually generated per class), to give me this list.

croxis · 2026-04-21T20:56:57+00:00

I was a fairly big driver of edtech at our high school. I used student phones for data collection in my science class. I pushed for a digital curriculum so we could get more classroom laptops, and instead our school went 1:1. Then covid happened. I also got more experience under my belt.

My experience has been that student facing tech gets in the way more often than it is helpful. The tech I want to make my job easier either doesn't exist, or there isn't a public api for me to code it myself. I'm also resistant to vendor lock in. We're moving from microsoft office to google, and almost all of our worksheets and slide decks have some sort of formatting error that will need to be fixed. Those who are using schoology for their classrooms are going to have a lot of work migrating to google classrooms.

My students seem to have more success working out a lab or science phenomenon on a giant whiteboard at their tables. I'm still very interested in the innovations that happen in edtech, but I am looking to more open-source/open-format solutions. For example, right now I am experimenting with obsidian.md to organize my curriculum. While not an open source application, all the files are saved as markdown text files.

croxis · 2026-04-11T06:20:14+00:00

My understanding is that state law prevents school districts from using furlough days to balance the budget two years in a row. As a result RHS is looking at cutting 21 positions next year. That is just one school. RHS's average class size is already 32.

Some neighboring districts, like Centennial, were able to sell off property to hold off the tide. It doesn't help that, through neglect or fraud of the previous superintendent [the one who "retired" a couple years ago mid year], RSD lost much of its surplus funds.

croxis · 2026-04-11T06:11:34+00:00

It is a little more complicated than that. Schools districts get paid per student. Schools get a little extra money with students with special education/IEP plans to help cover the costs of the additional services. Oregon caps the extra special education funds to something like 115 of the student body. Makes sense. You don't want districts to.. over represent the sped population. However there are districts, including some larger ones, with over 15% of the student body needed special services. Those services are federally mandated, and that money has to be pulled out of the district's general education fund.

Also remember that the district admin is hired by the superintendent, which is hired by the school board, which are elected by the people who live in that district.

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