The lesson study began 5 years ago with three members, but has since shrunk to two. Believing that a coherent approach to teaching energy was the key to all of physics, we set out to develop a lesson that would allow students to "discover" kinetic energy. Meanwhile, the other physics group was working on a lesson on Hooke's Law and potential energy. Or was it energy transfers?
We developed a plan for a far-too-open-ended inquiry lab involving rubber bands or springs, carts, tracks, etc... Students would use their understanding of transfers of energy to find the equation for kinetic energy allllll by themselves. Here are your materials, here is a nebulous objective, GO!
After that, we spent a large amount of time discussing the balance of inquiry and directed learning, and began to narrow the goals of our lesson further and further (See 2 Balancing Inquiry with Learning Goals). Ultimately, we realized that inquiry is a tool for learning, but that open inquiry was not a necessity for this lesson, nor was it the optimal tool for arriving at a quantitative description of KE.
Our journey next took us to the land of proportional reasoning. We realized the importance of this skill, and how we could further develop this skill through lab work, as well as through various activities that forced students to describe relationships between variables verbally (See 3 Describing the Relationship between Variables).
In the final stages of our lesson study development, we stumbled across the idea of a "Need to know" at the Project Based Learning workshop during the summer of '09. Our lesson evolved yet again when we realized that no lab or lesson would teach kids the quantitative description of KE if they had no reason to want to arrive at this result. If we told them the relationship and said "use it," they would. But if we wanted them to develop this relationship themselves somehow, they would need a darn good reason. And so was born the bungee egg project (See 4 Creating a Need to Know).
A Brief History of Our Lesson Study
The lesson study began 5 years ago with three members, but has since shrunk to two. Believing that a coherent approach to teaching energy was the key to all of physics, we set out to develop a lesson that would allow students to "discover" kinetic energy. Meanwhile, the other physics group was working on a lesson on Hooke's Law and potential energy. Or was it energy transfers?
We developed a plan for a far-too-open-ended inquiry lab involving rubber bands or springs, carts, tracks, etc... Students would use their understanding of transfers of energy to find the equation for kinetic energy allllll by themselves. Here are your materials, here is a nebulous objective, GO!
After that, we spent a large amount of time discussing the balance of inquiry and directed learning, and began to narrow the goals of our lesson further and further (See 2 Balancing Inquiry with Learning Goals). Ultimately, we realized that inquiry is a tool for learning, but that open inquiry was not a necessity for this lesson, nor was it the optimal tool for arriving at a quantitative description of KE.
Our journey next took us to the land of proportional reasoning. We realized the importance of this skill, and how we could further develop this skill through lab work, as well as through various activities that forced students to describe relationships between variables verbally (See 3 Describing the Relationship between Variables).
In the final stages of our lesson study development, we stumbled across the idea of a "Need to know" at the Project Based Learning workshop during the summer of '09. Our lesson evolved yet again when we realized that no lab or lesson would teach kids the quantitative description of KE if they had no reason to want to arrive at this result. If we told them the relationship and said "use it," they would. But if we wanted them to develop this relationship themselves somehow, they would need a darn good reason. And so was born the bungee egg project (See 4 Creating a Need to Know).
First lesson learned
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