Part+II,+acceleration

Benchmarks: 4F Motion
 * Students think in terms of motion or no motion.
 * To overcome this, divide motion into steady motion, speeding up or slowing down.
 * Connecting force to motion is much harder if student ideas of acceleration and force are muddy.
 * Student intuition about motion should be built around experiences before laws are introduced.
 * Later elementary grades could be the first time they attempt to measure speeds, but it is a challenge.
 * There is NO mention of acceleration and velocity in these sections, rather just misconceptions about Newton's second.
 * Surprised there is a lot of mention of different frames of reference.
 * The frame of reference is to be considered because there is no motionless frame from which to judge all motion.
 * Emphasis is placed on the relationship between force and "change in motion" and less is placed on calculating or understanding acceleration.

NSES:
 * The broad standard is physical science. The fundamental concept is motion and forces.
 * Early elementary: Locations such as up, down, in front or behind are developed.
 * Early elementary: they should be able to describe speed as distance traveled in a given unit of time.
 * Specific portions of the NSES:
 * "Laws of motion are used to calculate precisely the effects of forces on the motion of objects"
 * "The magnitude of a change in motion can be described by the equation F=ma"

Other insights from other sections of CTS:
 * Graphing points can help see patterns.
 * Giving more opportunities to OBSERVE motion: students are unfamiliar with the situations in some problems!
 * We should break motion up into parts to observe separately.
 * Even though relationship between forc eand change in motion is seen as an important aspect of literacy in science, but we wanted to expand on changes in motion. In other words, the science literacy standards don't go as deep as the content we might work with in our state standards.
 * Verbs from state standards: "distinguish" points out that students have difficulty knowing the difference between velocity and acceleration.
 * Can we use measurements in different units to hammer home the "understood 1" on the bottom of the acceleration quantity. (Measure something with a metronome as the "clock" with different settings, and then try to compare the results. We must have a "unit time" on the bottom.)

Next steps:
 * Proportional reasoning
 * Explore misconceptions that deal directly with velocity and acceleration. (U Minnesota, other journals)