The Knowles Academy offers state-of-the-art professional development experiences for teachers. All Academy courses are designed and facilitated by experienced teachers who understand the complexities of teaching in today’s world.
Through this Knowles Academy course, physics teachers will engage in an innovative approach to teaching physics that integrates project-based learning, modeling, and the science and engineering practices. The essential question that drives the approach is: “How do we find and use patterns in nature to predict the future and understand the past?”
Physics for the Next Generation: The Patterns Approach
This course is designed to enable educators to use an innovative approach to teaching physics that integrates storylines, project-based learning, modeling, and spreadsheet coding to engage students in the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The essential question that drives the approach is: “How do we find and use patterns in nature to predict the future, make data-informed decisions in the present, and understand the past?”
The approach focuses on facilitating students to use the big ideas of science to explain phenomena and solve problems. Participants, working through the design principles and curricular examples, will be prepared to guide their own students in taking on:
- The role of scientists in order to construct and make meaning of the big ideas of science and
- The role of engineers in order to use the big ideas of science to design data-informed solutions to real-world problems.
Course Highlights
- Learn how to use the design principles to incorporate real-world problems and storylines into physics courses
- Become familiar with strategies for guiding students in identifying and sense making of the common mathematical and graphical patterns in nature
- Analyze and integrate the Patterns Approach with the performance expectations of the NGSS
- Engage in a classroom project on bungee jumping that teaches concepts of energy and spreadsheet coding
- Guide students in analyzing data and constructing meaning through student talk
- Explore a classroom project on encoding, sending, and decoding digital information that engages students with the big ideas of waves to design a solution
- Use differentiated supports to help all students argue from evidence, including writing claim-evidence-reasoning style arguments (CERs)
Academy Services
All Knowles Academy courses can be customized to meet the specific needs of schools and/or districts. Please use the below form to request information about custom services.