Happy Back to School season to all who celebrate!

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate beginnings. I used to prefer jumping in to the work and figuring out all that other stuff as we went along. A major downside of my old approach was not really having everyone onboard for our journey. That’s why recently, I’ve been doing more work exposing my pedagogy to students and their families.

With an appreciation of beginnings, here’s this year’s letter to families. It’s going home after the first unit, about 4 weeks into the school year. My primary goal is to get parents onboard as partners in helping their 9th graders learn physics. For a bunch of reasons, most having nothing to do with the letter itself, I haven’t written one in about 9 years.

Greetings Parents,

With the school year in full swing, I hope that your child is enjoying their first fall at [school]. It’s great to meet you, I’m Megan Hayes-Golding and am your child’s Physics I teacher. We’ve recently completed our first modeling cycle, aka unit, and I’m excited to be writing to share about the experience. I hope that this letter helps provide context to your student’s experience in physics and gives you background for continued conversation with your student.

About Modeling Instruction

The first-year physics courses at [school] use the Modeling Instruction Method, a research-backed pedagogy that’s hands-on and incredibly effective. I love Modeling Instruction because, through it, I ensure students develop deep conceptual understanding without forming bad habits like memorizing and plug-and-chug equation solving.

Our Modeling Instruction curriculum consists of eight modeling cycles, or units. Each begins with students observing concrete phenomena, which I present as a paradigm lab. Students use that experiment to develop a model to explain what they observe. Finally, students practice problem-solving by deploying their model. During model deployment, students learn to argue from evidence and discover the limitations of their model. 

Modeling Instruction has been in use for 30 years. The method is well-studied and researched. The following video explains the process succinctly: https://vimeo.com/49925916.  In addition, a summary can be found at https://www.modelinginstruction.org/effective/.

Parents and Teachers as Partners

Experience has taught me that Modeling Instruction generates more initial discomfort in students than traditional methods, in which they passively receive and memorize equations. I also know the discomfort is normal and expected. It always gets better, and it always leads to deeper learning. 

Over this year, you may hear phrases like “my teacher never teaches us anything” or “we have to learn it all ourselves.” Rest assured, these are the comments of students who are coming into new understandings and navigating an instructional system that requires their active engagement. 

Occasionally, there can be a friction point when students think information delivered by lecture and regurgitation leads to deep learning. Instead, Modeling Instruction pushes students to actively construct their own knowledge by interrogating what they think they understand. The process feels slower and sometimes, more frustrating. They know I know the “right answer” but they’re also learning I’ll never just tell it to them. Instead, I’ll ask questions to get them thinking again. 

Success in this course rests on the notion of productive struggle or acquiring understanding with the right amount of effort. What is struggle? It’s the process of grappling with ideas, forming new neural connections, and building mental models from experiences. That takes effort. The productive part is my expertise in guiding students toward deep and durable understanding. Too much struggle and students get frustrated. They’re not getting anywhere so begin to think physics is impossible. Productive struggle builds frustration tolerance, and is probably the most valuable skill a student can acquire in Physics I.

While your student settles in, I ask you to partner with me. When you hear that they’re struggling in physics, ask a few questions. 

  • First, “what do you do when you don’t understand?” or “What strategies do you have to shift your understanding?” Consider using this opportunity to understand how they react to being confused. 
  • Second, “Tell me about how you are taking notes in physics.” This will help you understand where your student stands with executive function, the skills that help them stay organized and study effectively. 
  • Third, “can you walk me through where you got lost?” As you might imagine, formulating an explanation to you can help get students unstuck. 

Thank you very much for your partnership this year. I believe in my heart that every student can succeed in physics. Hopefully, I’ve given you the background to believe it, too. Now, with any luck, they’ll also have fun along the way! 

Regards,

Megan Hayes-Golding