The fundamental concepts in physics often pose major challenges to students' preformed notions of how the world works, and as such require approaches that require them to confront these notions head on. Given that much of high school physics involves the study of force and motion, ideas that students can experience daily and have a wealth of personal knowledge to draw upon already, classroom projects can be built around creating discrepant events that challenge students to think about what they are experiencing in a new way.

During the second quarter, students were given the charge of running their own cell phone company.  Their task was to compete with another company for customers within a specific age market.  Students’ advertising tactics were restricted to using those of a designated cell phone company such as Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile.  Using their knowledge of their company and their competitors, students created a presentation for potential customers.  The mathematical skills associated with benchmark were solving and graphing linear equations.  Click here to view a group's sample presentation.  Also, attached is a copy of this same group's graph, graph analysis, brochure, and t

While learning about biological taxonomy, our 9th grade bio/chem students took a closer look at taxonomic similiarites and differences between the earthworm and human.  Students then dissected the earthworm and researched some of the worm's body systems.  The final aspect of this project was to prepare and present a digital portfolio comparing the taxonomy and anatomy of the human to that of the earthworm.

I've attached the student guide, teacher unit plan, and a sample of student work.

One of the units that was the most engaging for me to teach this year connected themes from the book Night by Elie Weasel to the modern day prison crisis in the United States. Night is an incredibly powerful book that draws in readers and raises many universal issues. I find that the book lends itself to thoughtful class discussions and creative expression. Of particular interest were readings and discussions about indoctrination in Nazi Germany and connections to examples of torture sanctioned by the US government.

For the second quarter benchmark in Pre-Calculus, students tied together concepts involving transformations and trigonometric functions, and applied those principles in order to model real world data. Students collected data and generated sinusoidal functions modeling the average temperature and sunset times for one major US city. As a final product, students generated a detailed process guide explaining the process that they engaged in while generating their model functions. Their guide had to include graphical representations of their functions as well as their data points, and was meant to clearly explain their problem solving process.

During our study of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and the Grade 11 essential question, "What the relationship between the self and a changing world?" we wanted our students to consider how they may have changed since entering high school. As such, each G11 student was paired with a new G9 student. The G11s were charged with interviewing their underclassmen for a story that would prove interesting to a larger audience.

The project grew out of many discussions with returning SLA students who admitted not having a chance to get to know the new 9th graders. Academically, it was aimed at having students see how truth was formed in O'Brien's text and where the gray line was for their own interviews.

Students really enjoyed the anatomy project that compared earthworms (L. terrestris) and humans (H. sapiens). Some highlights of the plan included dissection, identification and comparison of organ systems, and video portfolios. See below for the sample student portfolios (note: the portfolios were sometimes a bit - - - unique!).

Student Portfolios:

This unit focused on inductive and deductive reasoning.  Students
were answering delving in to logical arguments and how to form them. 
This unit was a great introduction to writing formal proofs by starting
with logic puzzles and games.  Students completed a benchmark project
to complete this unit.  Their projects included writing 3 types of
puzzles, a color-square puzzle, a crossword puzzle and a puzzle of
their choice.  Then the students exchanged puzzles and solved their
partner's puzzles.  The student who was solving the puzzles had to use
syllogisms and conditional statements to prove the solution.  Their
written proofs were submitted with their puzzles in a portfolio format.