Newton'sLawsOfMotion



(1) I am looking for ways to increase the rigor of my unit. Many of the activities are short and easy; how can I make them more challenging and in depth for the students? With the water rocket, I'm having them calculate the force of the water expelled from the rocket and use trigonometry to find the height of the rocket. I feel these are appropriate for my high school students; are there similar things I can do for the other activities?

(2) I'm trying to think of ways to assess my students. What should the assessment look like? Should it be a quiz/exam, or some sort of activity? If it's a quiz/exam, what should the questions be about? How can I know that my students are grasping the science behind what we're doing?

Thanks!

-Noam



Noam, I think that the rigor will be perfect for the level of your students, given that they are a more academically-driven group. Also, I think that your assessment should be to design a new project (not necessarily that they need to create the design, but that they should have the appropriate design for something like a rocket). I think that this would be a proper assessment because they would need to individually design a project. In this, they might be replicating a previous design, but with a new goal. - Kate Latta

Noam, I think this is an excellent unit which your students are going to love! - In terms of rigor, I agree with Kate that the unit is pretty rigorous as-is. Depending on where your kids are at the start of the unit you could also include trigonometric extensions in other activities, including in the ramp-building activity. - For an assessment, I like Kate's idea of having students modify/create a project of their own. However, I also think it's important to assess them traditionally using a regents-based exam (or based on whatever end-of-year assessment they will be expected to take). This not only helps you monitor and track progress with specific concepts, but gives students an additional opportunity to gain experience with the formatting/wording of the regents. Rohit Tejwani