Sandra Penny

Unit 2: Climate Forcings part of Regulating Carbon Emissions
This unit uses systems thinking to explore how carbon emissions affect the global climate system. It includes an introduction to the greenhouse effect and climate modeling. Students engage in a small group activity ...

Unit 2.1: Why are waves created and what is the point of them? part of TIDeS:TIDeS Teaching Materials:Physical Science
Waves are observable all over the place, so why do they exist? Students analyze properties such as wave speed, distance traveled, and time elapsed through their own explorations. They are introduced to new lab ...

Sandra Penny: Using Regulating Carbon Emissions in Energy and the Environment (SCI-105) at Bard College part of Regulating Carbon Emissions
We spent 4 weeks on this module at the conclusion of a 14-week semester in an introductory course called "Energy and the Environment." Inclusion of this module is my first attempt to reform the course into a more activity-based environment that recognizes that global warming is a topic of special importance to the students. The real strength of this unit is that it brings in economics and politics to the discussion of climate change. About half of my students were business and public policy majors, and they welcomed the opportunity to make connections between a topic about which they are deeply concerned – global warming – and the topics that they have already chosen for their major field of study.

Physical Science part of TIDeS:TIDeS Teaching Materials:Physical Science
In this physical sciences course for future teachers, students explore typical concepts of energy, power, heat engines, pressure, density, buoyancy, fluids, projectile motion, and Newton's laws of motion. This ...

Russell Sage College: Using the TIDeS module in SCI-104: Physical and Earth Sciences part of TIDeS:TIDeS Teaching Materials:Physical Science
Prior to my taking over this course, it was a traditional lecture classroom with a handful of hands-on "lab" activities sprinkled throughout. In this TIDeS course, we really push the limits on what can be accomplished in a traditional classroom in a good way. Students get used to completing mini-labs and activities virtually every day and lecture/class discussion are used just for introduction and wrap-up/synthesis. To me, this course excels at modeling what a physical science course in a K-12 classroom SHOULD look like and that is how I approach it. This is a deliberate choice made because I want my students to become teachers who inspire their future students to love math and science, so rather than focusing on making the course "hard" we make it inspiring (though we do make them work!). Throughout the course, we discuss WHY certain instructional strategies are used (ex: how is this material requiring you to engage with your slow brain?) and emphasize that learning is a process by de-incentivizing the idea that you need to have "right" answer in order to make progress on your understanding. FYI: I had not previously taught this course before developing materials for TIDeS, so I can't comment on how I personally changed before-and-after.