Stacey Allen - Teacher, Revere High School
Content Area(s): Physics
Background / Bio / Educational Philosophy: My name is Stacey Allen and I am a Physics teacher at Revere High School, a large urban school north of Boston with a very diverse population of students. I teach a semester-long Physics class for 11th graders at both the college prep and honors level.
CAPSULE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN: In my classroom, I have used the EBL to implement various amusement park ride design projects throughout our physics (mechanics) curriculum in order to better connect physics concepts and problem-solving skills. My students often struggle with the relationships between the concepts, the math, and the real world applications, and through this series of design projects, they have the opportunity to consolidate all of their knowledge, while using the Engineering Design Process to see how a real engineer would design the types of rides that they have all seen.
The projects include three different types of amusement park rides: free-fall (1D kinematics), spinning/revolving (circular motion), and roller coasters (energy). I used the projects at the end of each of the respective units to give students a chance to apply their knowledge. In this way, students used the physics concepts and problem-solving skills they had learned to solve the real-world challenge of designing, analyzing, and building prototypes for these rides.
I began using these projects in my second year of teaching, and saw an increase in my students’ interest, engagement, and retention of conceptual knowledge almost immediately. The EBL implementation also had the general result of making physics more of a creative and enjoyable experience for my students (which, of course, made it a more enjoyable class to teach for myself).
Resources for these projects can be found below – they are organized by project. Please feel free to use, share, and modify these resources as you see fit for your own classroom.
Background / Bio / Educational Philosophy: My name is Stacey Allen and I am a Physics teacher at Revere High School, a large urban school north of Boston with a very diverse population of students. I teach a semester-long Physics class for 11th graders at both the college prep and honors level.
CAPSULE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN: In my classroom, I have used the EBL to implement various amusement park ride design projects throughout our physics (mechanics) curriculum in order to better connect physics concepts and problem-solving skills. My students often struggle with the relationships between the concepts, the math, and the real world applications, and through this series of design projects, they have the opportunity to consolidate all of their knowledge, while using the Engineering Design Process to see how a real engineer would design the types of rides that they have all seen.
The projects include three different types of amusement park rides: free-fall (1D kinematics), spinning/revolving (circular motion), and roller coasters (energy). I used the projects at the end of each of the respective units to give students a chance to apply their knowledge. In this way, students used the physics concepts and problem-solving skills they had learned to solve the real-world challenge of designing, analyzing, and building prototypes for these rides.
I began using these projects in my second year of teaching, and saw an increase in my students’ interest, engagement, and retention of conceptual knowledge almost immediately. The EBL implementation also had the general result of making physics more of a creative and enjoyable experience for my students (which, of course, made it a more enjoyable class to teach for myself).
Resources for these projects can be found below – they are organized by project. Please feel free to use, share, and modify these resources as you see fit for your own classroom.
Download copies of my implementation plan, classroom activities, EBL strategies, or related curricula below.
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Free Fall Rubric | |
File Size: | 11 kb |
File Type: | xlsx |
Roller Coaster-Data Table for calculations of critical points | |
File Size: | 13 kb |
File Type: | docx |