Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Entry slip Sept 17

 As a soon-to-be physics teacher, I believe the garden is an ideal setting for conceptual practices. Things that I immediately think of would be activities such as throwing a ball to study projectile motion, or something that usually can't be demonstrated indoors. I believe doing so can reinforce intuition when it comes to problem-solving. The garden also allows us to use our surroundings as a teachable material, for example, we can teach about colours by looking at the objects around us, such as leaves, and we can discuss why they appear to be green, which then can link to a discussion on the spectrum of light. I believe the garden is a good example to show students that physics is the natural law, and it is essentially the study of the universe.

The garden is a great place to build intuition, but physics also requires a lot of equations and hands-on practice for solving problems. By learning in the garden, it may be challenging to solve equations while sitting on the grass under a tree. However, we can always strike a balance on how much time we spend indoors and outdoors. For example, we could do a day of outdoor learning when we start a new topic, then for the following days, students can use their newly learnt intuition to help solve problems on paper.

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