Content

Bibliography APA:
Hewitt, Paul G. (2015). Teaching the Delightful Laws of Physics in a Survey Course. The Physics
Teacher, 53, 394-395. http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4931003
Summary: This article Hewitt focuses on the teaching with purpose rather than teaching for
fun or problem-solving. He suggests that Physics should be delightful, full of those aha!
moments. This comes when students are able to understand the concepts they are working
with rather than just doing math associated with equations. He continues by suggesting that
good teachers know when to limit material that is not realistically important or productive.
Hewitt suggests graphing and algebraic problem-solving are two areas in which teachers
currently focus too heavily in the classroom. Rather than spending large amounts of time
crunching numbers using meaningless equations, he suggests productive and delightful learning
focus on understanding key concepts and their relations, meaning of symbols and laws, and
learning relevant and real-world understandings of these ideas.
Purpose of Authors Work: The purpose of the authors work is to shift teachers away from
teaching the status norm with regards to early physics. In other words, Hewitt does not want
teachers to bore and confuse students with math-heavy lessons. He wants teachers to realize
that math solving is good, but it doesnt teach you much besides solving math. Rather he wants
educators to inform students on central concepts that students can carry with them long-term
as well as helping students to understand why things happen, enabling the students to have
those aha! moments when they understand why things work or are related.
Intended Audience: The author is reaching out to high school and entry college level physics
educators.
How it shaped your work: Hewitts article helped me realize I need to focus on transferring
knowledge related to concepts more heavily than math centered equations. In other words,
the content should be more conceptual than problem-solving based. This would take place in
several forms. First, worksheets would look drastically different. Rather than having problems
asking for algebraic math-solving, questions would focus on concepts, relations, and real-world
applications. For example, rather than asking what the Force acting on a 75 kg man free falling,
I would ask conceptual questions such as how could you increase the force of a man free
falling? Things like these help my students understand why things happen rather than what
specific results are when we use equations and plug and chug numbers. Second, this would
also allow me to show more demonstrations rather than lecturing and then having students
work on math problems like a typical physics classroom. I would be able to talk through in class
discussions why and how certain concepts would behave. This allows students to engage in the
material, me, and others while trying to figure out the conceptual issue rather than being by
themselves to work out a math problem. Lastly, this would allow my assessment to incorporate
stations with demonstrations that allow students to verbalize or write down how they

understand the concept, allowing for multiple means for arriving at the correct answer, rather
than having one concrete answer for a math question. This allows me to know how well they
truly understand the ideas rather than how well they understand how to do math.
Pedagogy
Bibliography APA:
Gates, Joshua. (2014). Experimentally Building a Qualitative Understanding of Newtons Second
Law. The Physics Teacher, 52, 542-545. http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4902198
Summary: Gates urges the importance of the need for students to understand conceptual
ideas and the relations between similar concepts. He suggests that students fail to see the
connection between the different concepts and there is a way to fix that: Do relevant
experiments through qualitative observation. Students observe the experiment and collect the
results qualitatively. Upon analyzing this experiment, students are better able to understand
the conceptual ideas rather than purely mathematical procedures. Gates suggests regathering
as a class by using a whiteboard visible by the whole room and supporting the experiment by
drawing free body diagrams and discussing the relationships that were found. This encourages
classroom discussion and critical thinking as to what they just observed. Finally, Gates suggests
to use a follow-up discussion to ensure understanding and application. This can take place both
in class and out of class.
Purpose of Authors Work: The author desires to share how educators can teach students how
to understand concepts through a purposeful set of in class events. Rather than seeing
students struggle to understand concepts, Gates shows how a hands on experimentanalyzation-discussion-follow-up procedure can better help the students understand the
fundamental relationships and key concepts on the material. The author taught Physics
himself, so he desires to help other educators avoid classic mistakes of focusing too heavy on
math problems and focus more on understanding of the material.
Intended Audience: The audience is physics educators. Due to the required procedure, this
would only apply to educators who teach in a classroom with access to experimental tools.
How it shaped your work: This article helped me realize a hands on, qualitative approach can
better serve my students than just using equations to solve math problems. This could be seen
in my unit as I progress through each of Newtons laws. Rather than doing math-heavy
experiments and assignment problems, I can help my students by getting them hands-on
experiments that help them understand concepts. I can then both engage and reinforce what
they learned by using class discussion and visual aids drawn up front. In my class this will likely
result in me taking out labs that had quantitative goals and replace them with labs that have
conceptual qualitative goals. I can still keep some problem solving assignments, but the focus
will be a lot less. Instead, worksheets will likely have more conceptual questions. Finally, I will
use interactive white boards aided by class discussions rather than lecturing. In summary, my

teaching should follow a procedure of getting hands on, analyzing, reinforcing together, and
finishing with follow up application questions.