Welcome to the 2019-2020 school year at Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School!
As your teacher, I commit to providing:
- Engaging, demanding, and justice-oriented teaching intended to support both students’ individual and collective self-determination;
- Office hours after school once a week during which students can seek additional support;
- Progress report meetings each marking period (October 7, January 27, and April 17);
- Ongoing dialogue about your son’s growth and needs throughout the year;
- An updated course website with assignments and due dates listed; and
- Opportunities for students to engage in science beyond our classroom through field trips, internships, and a monthly guest speaker program.
Check out a syllabus for each of my courses below:
Homework
**Ask Mr. Smith for a Google Classroom code for access**
What's Been Happening in Class?
Do Only Chemical Reactions Change Temperature? What About Physical Changes?
[Week 3, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry]
- What happens when something dissolves?
- What ideas do we have about temperature and particles?
How Can We Use Chemical and Physical Properties to Sort Plastics?
[Week 3, AP Environmental Science]
- What are chemical and physical properties?
- What makes kinds of plastics similar? Different?
Wait, How Small Is a Particle Anyway?
[Week 3, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry]
- What does it take to get to the nanoscale?
- How small are atoms and molecules compared to other stuff we've studied in science?
What Other Substances Might Change Temperature When We Mix Them?
[Week 2, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry]
- What does it look like to write a procedure?
- What ideas do we have about what's going on when temperature changes when we mix two substances?
Simulating Wastewater Treatment Processes
[Week 2, AP Environmental Science]
- What processes and properties of matter are involved in cleaning our water?
- How can we represent parts of a system?
What Happens When We Mix Substances Together?
[Week 2, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry]
- What does safe and productive lab work look like?
- How should we describe what we observe when we mix substances together?
More Practice with Observations and Explanations: What We Can See and What We Can't See
[Week 1, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, and AP Environmental Science]
- What is the relationship between observations and explanations?
- What are some common practices we might use to record observations and draft explanations?
- How should we work together in small groups?
Analyzing Historical Primary Sources and Asking Science and Social Studies Questions: "Radium Girls"
[Week 1, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, and AP Environmental Science]
- How can we use our observations and reflections to help us ask questions?
- What kinds of questions are productive for us to pursue as a class?
Observing and Explaining How a Loose Metal Spring Falls
[Week 1, Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, and AP Environmental Science]
- What is the relationship between observations and explanations?
- What are some common practices we might use to record observations and draft explanations?
- How should we work together in small groups?
- What does it look like to learn from each other in whole group discussion?
