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Re: physics first?



Sheri Donovan said in her original post on 9th grade physics, "What topics
would be best suited for such a course? What problems might we anticipate?"

My answers to these questions are in 2 posts.

In April 1999, I had a long phone conversation with Rex Rice in St. Louis.
Rex is an expert user of the Modeling Method of physics instruction, a
guided inquiry approach which centers the course on student construction of
models. Rex Rice's high school follows the science sequence promoted by
Leon Lederman: all freshmen have a year of physics, and all sophomores have
a year of chemistry. The juniors have biology, and they can take advanced
physics.

Below is my summary of our conversation. (Rex proofread my summary and
commented on it. His comments are in quotes.)

1) Types of students:
Rex's school is in a suburb of St. Louis. Clayton High School is a
comprehensive public high school, grades 9-12. 20% of the students are
inner city African Americans. Some inner city kids won't do the work in
Rex's freshman regular physics course, and so they are at the bottom of the
class. Rex says, "many won't do the work. I have many who do, and as a
result do fine in the course."

2) Methodology:
Rex follows the modeling approach fully in his 2 sections of the regular
freshman physics course. He likes some of the C3P activities (his wife,
Debbie, is a C3P mentor) but says that modeling has a lot more to offer.
But modeling is harder to teach freshmen than juniors, he says. The
freshman honors teacher uses modeling, but the rest of the freshmen physics
teachers give more of a survey course. When the students come into Rex's
junior course, he can really tell the difference; his regular freshman
students and the honors freshman students are much better prepared.

Rex adds, "I do have a colleague, new to the school, who did modeling with
the freshmen along with me this year. He and his students did reasonably
well for a first-timer without the benefit of the formal modeling
training."

3) Why physics first?
Rex was instrumental in getting his school to change to the physics -
chemistry - biology sequence several years ago, because the old sequence
made no sense. He says this one is MUCH better than the traditional
sequence. The biology teachers are thrilled, he says!

4) For the sophomore chemistry course, the regular course uses CHEMCOM.

5) Why a full year of freshman physics, rather than chem/phys?
Rex says, "In a chem/phys course, there is not much chance of doing much
more than a survey. This course should be about teaching students to "do"
science. I know of no better training for this than a freshman course in
physics taught using a "lower math" modeling method.
*******************************

Jane Jackson, Dir., Modeling Workshop Project
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics, ASU, Tempe, AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331. http://modeling.la.asu.edu
Genius must transform the world, that the world may produce more genius.