Members of the group have asked for some time during the next tutorial on revision and exam preparation. I will also need to cover some Book 7 "Quarks to quasars" content.
The tutorial is planned for fairly early in the the book 7 work, so I will focus on atomic and nuclear structure. We have touched on these topics earlier in S104, so there should be a good degree of familiarity.
I looked at an old TMA and decided to base much of the session on two topics: energy levels, spectra and hydrogen-like ions, and on nuclear reactions and decays. I prepared a Word document for me to use, with the questions and answer notes, and with some illustrative material from S104 and S282.
In case we get through that fairly quickly, I printed off some handouts for my Hubble expansion activity. I devised this activity at the start of S104, as one of the 'offical' tutorial resources. It would be useful if we can do this activity, because it links very well with the cosmology online discussion I have just initiated on the forum.
I then worked though the S104 specimen exam paper to familiarise myself with the contents. I will recommend that in the exam students do the Part B question first (presumably a graph), then the computer-marked Part A questions. The two longer questions from Part C should be left until last. I think it should be reasonable for people to aim to get through the exam in around two hours. After doing Part B and Part A I suspect most people will have reached or be close to their 40% pass mark.
I also printed out the short questions from an old S103 end of Course Assessment. We can work through some of these in the tutorial.
Personal Blogs
S104 tutorial - book 7 and revision
Tuesday 16 April 2013 at 14:07
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Another S104 Earth science tutorial
Monday 8 April 2013 at 13:31
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This tutorial for my Dundee group is going to be essentially another run of the one I provided in Aberdeen a few weeks ago. The material will still be relevant, and in fact the students will be more familiar with the content.
However, there were improvements that I wanted to make.
For the exercise on interpreting geological cross-sections I wanted to prepared set of sketches showing the evolution of the location. Unfortunately these did not exist in the Tutor Notes for the original use of the question in the 2008 TMA. I drew my own set using MS Paint and the pen of my Tablet PC. These images were then inserted into a PowerPoint, which I can run at the tutorial.
For the radiactive decay exercise I added a few points to the Tutor Notes to remind me to review nuclear structure, and to describe decay in terms of particles, and in terms of numbers of nuclei and the half-life. I also found some more 1p coins to give the possibility of more points on the graph.
However, there were improvements that I wanted to make.
For the exercise on interpreting geological cross-sections I wanted to prepared set of sketches showing the evolution of the location. Unfortunately these did not exist in the Tutor Notes for the original use of the question in the 2008 TMA. I drew my own set using MS Paint and the pen of my Tablet PC. These images were then inserted into a PowerPoint, which I can run at the tutorial.
For the radiactive decay exercise I added a few points to the Tutor Notes to remind me to review nuclear structure, and to describe decay in terms of particles, and in terms of numbers of nuclei and the half-life. I also found some more 1p coins to give the possibility of more points on the graph.
Review of the S104 Earth science tutorial
Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:11
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I managed to run through the three planned activities - just.
The interpretation of geological cross-sections proved fairly difficult for the students, as I anticipated. It was clear that they were still only just getting into thinking about geology again. It would have been useful to start with a review of the natures of the rock types in the exercise. This would be through looking at samples, or by providing a summary table (or both). The explanation of the process of reconstructing the history would be easier if I had some prepared slides of the stages. I think the last time I did a similar activity we were still using roller backboards - which made some of the rock movement descriptions more convenient!
So this is a really good activity, but it would benefit from additional effort on the presentation.
The radioactive decay activity really would benefit from using 100 pennies. In view of the shortage I decided not to use the D/P ratio part. This activity would also benefit from some additional introductory discussion.
I only had a short time for the discussion of the 'essay' on plate tectonics and the rock cycle. However it engaged the students and let us discuss issues such as sentence lengths, introductions, and matching the answer to the question.
This tutorial was run for my S104 group in Aberdeen, and I will make sure I update it for the tutorial in Dundee in a couple of weeks' time. I will also try to obtain another 50 pennies.
The interpretation of geological cross-sections proved fairly difficult for the students, as I anticipated. It was clear that they were still only just getting into thinking about geology again. It would have been useful to start with a review of the natures of the rock types in the exercise. This would be through looking at samples, or by providing a summary table (or both). The explanation of the process of reconstructing the history would be easier if I had some prepared slides of the stages. I think the last time I did a similar activity we were still using roller backboards - which made some of the rock movement descriptions more convenient!
So this is a really good activity, but it would benefit from additional effort on the presentation.
The radioactive decay activity really would benefit from using 100 pennies. In view of the shortage I decided not to use the D/P ratio part. This activity would also benefit from some additional introductory discussion.
I only had a short time for the discussion of the 'essay' on plate tectonics and the rock cycle. However it engaged the students and let us discuss issues such as sentence lengths, introductions, and matching the answer to the question.
This tutorial was run for my S104 group in Aberdeen, and I will make sure I update it for the tutorial in Dundee in a couple of weeks' time. I will also try to obtain another 50 pennies.
S104 Earth science face-to-face
Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:10
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I need to prepare a face-to-face tutorial for one of my S104 "Exploring science" groups. This is for the Earth science material of Book 6. The difficulty is that these students should only have studied the two chapters of the book. In fact, many of them may still be working on the TMA covering the previous book. I need to find or devise Earth science activities that everyone can engage with. Fortunately the students have already studied one book of Earth science so there will be some familiarity with the topic.
I would like to include an activity on extracting the sequence of events from a geological cross-section. Students find this a difficult task, and it is tested in the TMA.
A review of my previous tutorials showed that I had not done a tutorial at this stage of the module for many years. On the S104 tutors' resources area I found two activities that I had not used before: modelling radioactive decay and reviewing a piece of writing (a 'student answer' to a TMA question) on the connection between plate tectonics and the rock cycle. The review focuses on writing skills, but also addresses geology. Either would be useable.
The decay activity would help the students understand the maths of the topic but requires one hundred identical coins. A search turned up fifty - and I can live with that!
The writing activity provides useful discussion of the three types of rock, but does not actually provide information on the plate tectonics. I would need to add that. However this activity might be a waste of valuable face-to-face time, being well suited to a forum activity.
I searched for a geological cross-section question and eventually found one reasonably different from the one in the current TMA. This will allow me to discuss the principles without disclosing parts of the TMA answer. I was not able to access the S104 tutor notes for this question, so I drafted my own.
So, my plan is
- interpreting geological cross-section
- radioactive decay (needs 50 pennies, box for the pennies, graph paper
- review of 'essay' on plate tectonics and the rock cycle.
This provides a good mix of hand-on activity, group work, graph drawing, discussion of geological principles and writing skills.
I now need to package the materials into my folder for the session, print off copies of some sheets for student handouts, and collect together the other materials I will need.
[21 March 2013]
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