Laura,+London,+Mark

**Student Understanding of Acceleration**

Although acceleration is a bit more complicated because it is a rate of a rate of change, we have chosen to tackle it for our first iteration of lesson study. We feel that it is one of the most misunderstood concepts that comes up early in a physics class and is common to almost every physics class no matter the level or teacher.

This wiki serves to document our progress in our quest to design, revise, teach, revise, redesign, reteach, etc. the concept of acceleration.


 * October, 2009 - Seattle Washington**
 * Physical Science Fall Meeting**

Group Selection Mark, London, and Laura all currently teach or plan to teach high school physics. The common subject and excellent group dynamics brought us together.

@K-W-L A Survey of what we already know and would like to know about the best ways to teach the concept of acceleration. This includes content knoledge and pedegogical content knowledge.

CTS We spent a good portion of time consulting the local and national standards that relate to acceleration. We surveyed __Benchmarks__, __NSES__, a__n__d others.

Analysis of textbook We looked at our current textbooks as well as others made available to see what progression is used to teach acceleration and what connections to other units exist.

Homework We made Plans for gathering evidence of student understanding that included a process to administer and get results of a pre-test to determine what misconceptions students have about acceleration.


 * March 2010 - Atlanta, GA**
 * 2009 Cohorts Spring Meeting**

Protocol for lesson study activities

Understanding By Design We used the UBD framework to develop big ideas, desired understandings, KUDs, and Essential Questions for our lesson study. All can be found on the link above.

Pre-test analysis Review results of pre-test that was administered between fall meeting and spring meeting

Goals: --Complete first 3 steps of the Lesson study outline for our topic
 * July 2010--Philadelphia, PA**
 * 2010 Summer Meeting**

Plan velocity post-test evidence to collect for fall cohort meeting We chose two multiple part questions to give on a velocity post-test to further understand what base knowledge students should have coming into a study of acceleration. The idea is to use this post-test as a baseline and pre-test for the second iteration of questions that will come on an acceleration post-test.

- Create Prezi of prior knowledge - Review results of velocity post-test (see Summer 2010) - plan lesson activity - Flip book of accelerated and non-accelerated motion - Agree to teach lesson and bring feedback to spring meeting
 * October 2010 - Pittsburgh, PA**
 * 2010 Fall Meeting**

WIKI TO DO LIST: (hopefully we can add our ideas for what needs to be done, or do things from this list to keep the wiki from going stagnant. Put initials by ones you suggest in case the other two get confused.)
 * 1) LD- Compile and complete the textbook analysis. (I still have a paper version)
 * 2) X MH- add misconception codes and resulting percentages to modified diagnoser survey results.

Concept Map: Acceleration Research Resources