Physics 11 Well that didn’t go so great [the above is a screenshot of the standard kin.4 from ActiveGrade, which shows most kids not having mastery]. On average the students were not able to show mastery of our constant acceleration kinematics problem solving standard. Most are very close, so I’ll have to make a decision on where we go with this next. I can do another quiz during class, give an after school quiz, or leave it for student initiated assessments.
The quiz revealed the same things I see every year. The absolute complete reluctance to write down information, make sketches, or sketch graphs. The question that tripped most people is actually pretty straight forward if you bother to take the time to sketch the velocity time curve. Since we’ve been scaffolding graphing all the way through, it is disappointing to see it completely abandoned at this stage. I could explicitly ask for graphs on the quiz, but then I would hear a large uproar of complaints about that too.
It is very odd. The kids that do the best are the ones that complain the least. They also do the little things right. I wonder which comes first? Do they complain the least and do higher quality work because they already understand the physics? Or do they understand the physics because they’ve taken the time to do the little things right and persevere?
We’re starting forces next, and I know that the same students that struggle when trying to do a graph or clearly write down the model they are using will continue down this path.
