Planning Instructional Elements
Eugenia Etkina
Rutgers University
The module consists of several small parts. Each part has either two or more of the
following components: brainstorming, information and activities. Assessment for the
module will consist of you writing a unit plan and a lesson plan.
I. What is an instructional element? 3 steps in planning any element
II. Setting goals
III. Matching assessment to the goals - formative and summative
IV. Planning instructional sequence. Writing a lesson plan
V. Writing a unit plan
VI. Evaluation of teacher unit and lesson planning and assessment
I.
What is an instructional element?
1. Brainstorming
Look back on all the years that you have been a student. In what kinds of educational
activities did you participate? These were lessons in high schools, lectures, and labs. You
probably have taken short and long courses and/or workshops. Possibly you have taken a
driving course or a music instrument playing course, a cooking or a knitting course. A
lesson, a lab, a workshop, and a course - these represent elements of instruction. An
instructional element can be as short as 10 minutes or as long as a semester. Think of what
all these elements have in common.
Make a list of these things. The find a partner, discuss your list with her/him and make a
combined list.
2. Information
Independently of the size of an element of instruction: let it be a long month unit on
magnetic fields and electromagnetic induction or a 20 min mini-lab on collecting position
and time data for a moving cart, there are three components that are always present in the
planning process of a teacher. The teacher needs to
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a) Identify goals of the instructional element (this means to articulate clearly how the
students will be different after they have taken part in the instruction compared to
before). The goals need to be assessable goals (for example, the students will be able
to identify conditions needed to induce electric current in a conductor that is not
connected to a battery);
b) Describe what achievement of these goals will look like (the students will be able to
create electric current in a coil of wire not connected to a battery using at least two
different methods or the students will be able to interpret position vs. time graph
created by someone else).
c) Plan the activities in which students will engage so that they move towards
achieving the goals (will the students observe a particular experiment or a series of
experiments and infer a pattern from them? Will they test the pattern in new
experiments? Will they work with simulations? Will they answer a series of
questions that you posed and then do an experiment? Will they work individually or
in groups? What resources will they use?).
In this module we will focus on two different kinds of instructional elements: a lesson and a
unit. A lesson is something that occurs on the same day and it can last from 40 to 90 min.
For example a lesson can be a review of Newton’s laws before the final test. A unit is
comprised of multiple lessons united by the same main concept. For example, a unit on DC
circuits or a unit on Newton’s laws.
For each of the three components there are certain steps that are necessary to take and
issues to think about. We will discuss each of them in detail later in the module.
3. Activities
1. Find a high school physics textbook. Familiarize yourself with the sequence of the
material in it. Identify units. Choose one unit and try to figure out about how many
45 -min lessons it will take for the students to master the content.
2. Find physics curriculum for a school district. Can you identify units in the
curriculum? How many units are in the curriculum? How long is each unit?
3. Download from the Internet Next Generation Science Standards. Examine the
structure of the standards. Find High School Physical Science story line and
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corresponding core ideas. Are standards grouped around the units of instruction?
How do you know?
II.
Setting goals of instruction.
1. Brainstorming
What kind of goals might you set for a lesson (for example a lesson that involves
acceleration)? What kinds of goals might you set for a unit (for example a unit of Newton’s
laws)?
Think of what you need to know in order to set the goals, then turn to your partner and discuss
you ideas with her/him. Present your consensus to the class.
2. Information
Step 1: Knowing where your students are
To identify goals of instruction for any instructional element the teacher needs to fist know
very well where her/his students are. How does one learn what his/her students know? I
would suggest a few strategies to inform you about
(1) Where your students are in regards to the content and practices, that are the foundation
of the new material (for example, the students need to master motion diagrams before
moving into force diagrams). Here a short quiz on previous material might help.
(2) What your students think about the ideas in the new topic. Here you can show (or let
students do themselves) a very simple experiment and then ask them to provide as many
explanations as many as they can for the observations (we even call these explanations
“crazy ideas”) without using scientific terms. This way students will share their ideas
without worrying that the ideas are wrong and they will not throw science terms at you that
they do not understand.
Often pedagogical literature suggests two paths to gain this knowledge:
(1) To give a pretest to the students;
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(2) To elicit their prior knowledge by asking what they know about what they know about a
particular idea (for example asking the students: What do you know about energy?) before
moving forward.
I would advise against both approaches every day; they need to be used occasionally and
with extreme care.
Dangers of a pre-test:
It is impossible to write a pre-test about the new material without using the words that
students do not understand. If there is no shared meaning of the words, the interpretation
of students’ answers is impossible. In the past 20 years physics education community has
been using Force Concept Inventory (FCI) as a pre-test as this test originally attempted to
avoid the above pitfall - it does not use any words other than FORCE that everyone is sure
all students know. But even this word, seemingly familiar to the students, does not have a
shared meaning and we do not know what a particular student thinks when she/he read the
word “force”. In addition, tests like FCI that have carefully chosen distractors based on
student ideas expressed in the interviews (interviewed students were post-instruction),
might lead your students to create the wrong ideas in their minds that they did not have
before they took the test. Thus the test might make the subsequent learning more difficult.
Does it mean that we should abandon pre-testing? Not at all! But while giving those tests we
need to be aware of the complications that they create and to make sure that we do not do it
too often - twice a year is probably a reasonable number.
Danger of directly eliciting prior knowledge: Teachers often ask students directly questions
to answer which students need to make answers on the spot “What do you think
momentum is?” or they will bring in their every-day knowledge that they have constructed
in the real world situation not in the simplified physics environment: “If you drop a heavy
and a light object from the same height at the same time, which one will land first?” The first
approach makes students speculate about the word, which does not have a shared meaning,
and the second might indicate that students have a “misconception” (I put this word in
quotes as I do not like it). While in fact, in their everyday lives they observe and experience
many times that heavier objects move downward faster. Only their experience is in the airrich environment and the teacher’s question is about air-less environment.
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These two examples show how tricky it is to know where your students are and how it
cannot be done in 15 min either through a test or a discussion. Learning where your
students are is a continuous process of careful observation, documentation, thinking and
conversations with your students. The more you listen to them without judgment, the more
you know where they are.
Step 2: Deciding where you want them to be
Imagine that you have an idea of where most of your students are at a particular point in
time. How will you decide where they need to be after your instruction? Your own
knowledge of physics, the district curriculum and the textbook that your school uses in the
course and the Next Generation Science Standards provide guidance for you.
For example, you are planning a lesson in the unit on work and energy, specifically the
lesson that addresses the standard NGSS HS-PS3-2: Develop and use models to illustrate
that energy at the macroscopic scale can be accounted for as a combination of energy
associated with the motions of particles (objects) and energy associated with the relative
position of particles (objects). Although the standards set the boundary as “explaining the
meaning of mathematical expressions used in the model” you wish your students also to
know where the expressions came from.
You might state the goals as follows: The students will be able to explain the meaning of
variables in the expressions for gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy and they
will be able to show where these expressions came from. While achieving these goals the
students will engage in the practices of mathematical and computational thinking and in
developing and using models. The key cross cutting concepts that will be used in the lesson
will be system and system models and cause and effect.
Try not to formulate the goals in terms of what students will learn or understand. These are
not assessable goals. When thinking about goals, always try to formulate them in a way that
would help you assess whether the goals were achieved.
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3. Activities
How do you set the goals? Sometimes it is helpful to break the goals into disciplinary core
ideas (DCI) goals, science practice goals and crosscutting concepts goals (see those in the
NGSS). For example you can set the following goal: students will test whether the energy is
constant in an isolated system (DCI-related goal). Another possible goal can be: students
will be able to interpret graphical information for different types of graphs in kinematics
(Science practice-related goal). Finally the goal for the students to be able conduct energy
analysis of the same process using two different systems can become a crosscutting
concepts-oriented goal.
a) Examine NGSS for a core idea of Energy for High School. Use materials in the
standards to identify 3 goals of instruction that your students can achieve studying
energy in mechanics (a unit) and describe the evidence that the standards
recommend to use to find whether the goals are achieved. What should students
already know or be able to do to be able to achieve these goals?
b) Choose one hypothetical 45-min lesson from the energy unit in mechanics and list
the goals that address the disciplinary core ideas, science practices and crosscutting
concepts. Describe briefly what students should learn in the preceding lessons to be
successful in achieving the goals.
c) Find curriculum for a school district and familiarize yourself with it.
Can you identify goals of instruction in the curriculum? Make a list.
III.
Matching assessment to the goals - formative and summative
1. Brainstorming
Brainstorm possible ways of assessing student achievement of a particular goal. Share your
ideas with your partner. What is the same in your thinking about assessment? What is
different?
2. Information
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Overview: A dictionary provides the following definition of assessment: the evaluation or
estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something. In our context
assessment means evaluation or estimation of how well a student achieved a particular
goal. What are possible ways of doing this?

You can stand next to a group of students and listen to their conversations;

You can ask them targeted questions and listen to individual responses or give
them time to work in groups and listen to group responses;

You can give them a written quiz, etc.
In any case, ideally their responses should give you an idea of where the student(s) are.
You probably heard terms formative and summative assessment. Both relate to collecting
information on student learning. The difference is that formative assessment is done during
instruction with the goal of adjusting instruction to meet the needs of students. Summative
assessment has a purpose of recording where students are at a particular instant in time.
One can do summative assessment at the end of one lesson if the results of the assessment
do not affect the lesson tomorrow. One can turn the final unit test into formative assessment
if the test is followed up by student work on improving their knowledge and gaining
additional understanding. Basically, the message here is that EVERY assessment you
conduct in your class should be formative. Examples of activities that you can do in the
classroom for formative assessment:
1. Traditional conceptual questions
2. Explain XXX
3. How do you know that xxx?
4. You friend thinks XXX – why would she think this way? Do you agree or disagree? If you
disagree, how would you convince her in your opinion?
5. Traditional quantitative problems
6. “Tell all” problems
7. Multiple representation tasks
8. Jeopardy tasks (see Multiple Representations module)
9. Ranking tasks
10. “What is wrong” tasks
11. “How would you convince somebody” tasks
12. “Why do you agree with?” tasks
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13. Data analysis tasks
14. Experiment design tasks
15. Lab reports
Think of yourself learning something - to play a musical instrument, to play a particular
sport, to knit, or to garden. The key to successful learning is the ability to receive feedback
on your performance and improve right away. Unfortunately this process is not always
present in the schools. We often give students a grade and it becomes the final stamp of
their learning, even if the grade reflects the lack of it. A student receives a C and the class
rolls on. Research on learning indicates that it is crucial to give students an opportunity to
improve their work. Let it be a quiz, a homework assignment, a lab report students should
receive feedback on the quality and an opportunity to revise, improve, etc.
Standards-based assessment Traditionally you are familiar with the grades based
assessment when a student receives a grade based on the correctness of completing an
assignment. Standards-based assessment is different because you are not assessing
correctness of solving a particular problem but instead you are assessing how a student
meets a particular standard set in advance (for example a standard of being able to
represents a situation with a force diagram). This approach requires setting goals of
instruction for the students and providing mechanisms of helping them to know whether
they achieve the goals. Self-assessment rubrics are one of the ways to set the standards.
3. Activities
a) Go to http://diagnoser.com and create an account for yourself as a teacher. Familiarize
yourself with the website and learn how its design provides you with the information of
where your students are now and what they need to do to get where we want them to be.
b) The following resources contain different formats of formative assessment exercises that
you might use in your classroom. Your task is to familiarize yourself with the resources
compare their advantages for different areas of physics.

T. O’Kuma, D. Maloney, C. Hieggelke, Ranking Task Exercises in Physics: Instructor
Edition, Pearson, 2003

C. Hieggelke, S. Kanim, D. Maloney, T. O'Kuma, TIPERs: Sense making Tasks for
Introductory Physics, Pearson, 2015.
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
Etkina, E., Gentile, M., Van Heuvelen, A. The Active Learning Guide, (a component of
the College Physics textbook), Pearson, 2014.
c) Find 3 activities from each book that can be used as formative assessment activities.
Describe what goals of learning are these activities assessing. Write pretend incorrect
student responses and show how you will respond when students demonstrate those
difficulties.
IV.
Planning instructional sequence
1. Brainstorming
Imagine you set instructional goals for a lesson and you know what the achievement of the
goals looks like. Think of how you will decide what you will do or students will do in a
particular time period. Discuss your ideas with your partner.
2. Information
Below you see a lesson plan written by a teacher for the first lesson in the instructional unit
of kinematics - the study of motion.
The author used New Jersey standards to determine the goals. Curriculum materials used in
the lesson planning are taken from Physics union Mathematics Curriculum modules which
are based on Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) philosophy described on
the website http://pum.rutgers.edu. ISLE philosophy of teaching and learning physics
assumes a very specific approach to student learning of physics. Students construct physics
concepts and develop science process abilities emulating the processes that physicists use
to construct knowledge by following so-called ISLE cycle. They work in groups and progress
from observations of phenomena to pattern recognition, constructions of explanations and
relationships, testing of those explanations (with the purpose of elimination rather than
support) and finally to application (read more about ISLE cycle on PUM website). Teacher
lecturing occurs minimally and only after students have struggled to construct concepts, not
before. More about ISLE approach read in reference 1 at the end of this module.
Before proceeding to the next step, download Physics II Kinematics Lesson 1 materials from
the above website. Note that it might take a day to obtain the login information.
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Examine the lesson plan carefully and identify the elements that relate to setting the goals,
determining whether the goals are achieved and the learning progression for the students.
Title: Hey, who is moving here?
Essential question: what is motion? What is difficult about it? People perceive Earth to
be a special reference frame and they consider an Earth-based observer absolute.
Understanding of Geo/Helio centric debate is impossible without understanding the
concept of relative motion
Next Generation Science Standards:
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Reference frame (appears in PS2.a - Force and motion - Momentum is defined for a
particular frame of reference)
Science practices - Obtaining, evaluating and communicating information, engaging in
argument from evidence
What should students know before they start the lesson: This is intended to be the
first lesson of the physics course so other than expecting students to know what North
and South are and what a Cartesian system is– nothing more is required.
Goals for HS students:
Conceptual
1. Students will be able to describe motion from the point of view of different
observers, including those who are at rest with respect to the floor.
2. Students will be able to use a reference frame with all of its components to describe
motion.
Science practice
3. Students will be able to explain what an assumption is.
4. Students will be able to describe how what we learn about motion relates to real
life.
5. Students will be able to argue their point of view about whether a particular object
is moving or not.
Evidence that will convince me that the goals were achieved:
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1. Students can answer positively and explain their answer to the question “Are you
moving now” and “Why did we all think that the train left the station?”
2. When working with the map exercise students are able to think about the object of
reference, coordinate system, scale and time of the start.
3. When working with the map assignment students explicitly state their assumptions
and suggest alternative answers if the assumptions are not valid.
4. Students will be able to give real life examples of the important of understanding of
the relative nature of motion and assumptions at the end of the lesson.
Most important ideas in terms of the subject area: motion is relative: both
qualitative description of motion and physical quantities depend on the choice of the
reference frame, the relativity of motion is important for Galilean transformation of
velocity, for Newton’s first law (inertial and non-inertial reference frames) and for
special relativity; in addition, none of the spherical astronomy ideas can be understood
without mastering the concept of relative motion. For the frame it is important that the
object of reference should come before the coordinate system, assumptions are
statements accepted without examination (usually people are unaware of making
assumptions), thus one should carefully question if any axillary assumptions were made
when she/he made a prediction.
Students’ ideas that they bring into the lesson: productive – students are familiar
with maps, North-South, scales, etc. Unproductive – by the nature of our experiences we
are used to thinking of observers who are on Earth as not moving, just the thought that
a person sitting on a chair can be moving. To address these difficulties we will have the
video clip at the beginning of the lesson and a series of assessment questions at the end
(see above).
Equipment: PUM materials (see at http://pum.rutgers.edu Physics II Modules, Physics
II Kinematics, Lesson 1 - see all activities as they are not repeated in this lesson plan,
ball, rollerblades, computer, projector, Internet access, white boards and markers for
group presentations.
Sequence of activities
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1. Creating the need to know – a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akLC_JMjpjA
http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/13164681/1238916851/name/relative%20motion%20
train%20station%2Emp4 - students observe, the teacher hears the gasp and does not
ask for explanations at that moment - says that at the end of the lesson students will be
able to explain why they gasped.
2. Developing the idea of relative motion and reference frame: Rollerblading activity –
teacher skates along the board holding a ball, students point “telescopes” at the ball, and
answer the following question: who sees the ball moving? How do we know?
PUM Lesson 1 activities 1- 3 - students work in groups of 3 and present their findings on
white boards.
Real life connections after 2: when do different people see the same event differently?
3. Formative assessments and Reflection (see below)
Time table (times are approximate and subject to change depending on student
responces)
Clock reading
during the
lesson
0 - 2 min
“Title of the
activity” Relation
to the goals
Hook – the video
2-12 min
Rollerblading
activity – goal 1
12-35 min
PUM activities 1, 2
and 3 – goals 2
and 3
35-45 min
Going back to the
video, reflection,
assessments – goal
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Playing the Secret
spot game – goals
2 and 3
45-55 min – an
alternative to
the map
activity to
invent the
concept of the
reference
frame
Students doing
Me doing
Observing,
discussing - whole
class
Observing,
discussing - whole
class
Working through
the activities group work,
presentations
Discussing
Listening
Playing
Guiding,
summarizing
Guiding
Seeding,
monitoring
Listening,
summarizing
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4. Formative assessment questions – Goal 1: Activity 1.2 and train video (object of
reference, direction of reference – check for both – if missing, ask who is making the
statement? How can you say where she is moving? In the summary focus on the object
of reference, direction of reference, check for their understanding for the words
ambiguous and unambiguous). Additional: we say “the Sun rises” – what is missing from
this description of the Sun’s motion? Goal 2: - Activities 1.1 And 1.2 + more.
5. Goals 3 &4: Activity 1.3 – not only details of the reference frame but also the role of
assumptions.
6. Formative assessment for goal 2: Find the secret spot game (one student leaves the
room and the teacher moves in a particular way reaching a specific point - secret spot,
the rest of the class needs to give directions (at once) to the student who did not see the
motion so she/he can arrive to the same destination; the students will realize that they
need to identify where to start, coordinate system, and scale for measurement.)
7. Reflection at the end of the lesson: What was the purpose of the train movie at the
beginning and why did you all gasp at the end? Why was it important to learn what we
learned today? What questions remained unclear? What would you ask at home to find
out if your parents/friends/siblings understand what you learned today?
8. Homework
Relate
Describe three situations from your life that are relevant to your idea of relative motion
and reference frames.
Explain
a) Using the idea of a reference frame to provide directions to get to you school from
your house so that you can get to the school 15 minutes before the homeroom
begins.
b) When we say the Sun is rising and the Sun is setting, who is the observer? Where
should the observer be to see that the Sun does not move around Earth every 24
hours?
c) Someone in your class says the “The Sun does not move,” then why do we have days
and nights?
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9. Project related to today’s class: investigate why we have days and nights on Earth
and why the concept of relative motion is important for it. Possible formats: ppt.
presentation, a movie, and a show.
3. Activities
a) List numbered elements of the lesson plan and explain the purpose of each.
b) Does the lesson plan indicate that students are engaged in the construction of their
own knowledge or that they are passive listeners? Provide arguments.
c) Does the plan indicate knowledge of students’ strengths and weaknesses? Provide
arguments.
d) Does the plan show the knowledge of available resources? Provide arguments.
e) Use PUM Physics II Kinematics lesson 1 to explain how students will achieve the
goals. Make sure you articulate the purpose of each activity in the PUM lesson.
f) Examine the sequence of activities and come up with possible scenarios of how this
sequence might change depending on student responses. Where might students
spend more time? Less time? Where a different activity might be necessary? Notice
that although the lesson plan has an exact time table it does not mean that the plan
needs to be implemented in class to a t. In fact, following the plan no matter what
students are saying does not represent good teaching. When implementing your
plan in class you need to be ready to be flexible.
g) Examine PUM Physics II Kinematics lesson 2 and write a lesson plan for this lesson.
h) Choose a set of goals appropriate for one 45 min introductory lesson on Newton’s
third law and write a lesson plan this lesson.
i) You know from your experience as a student that there are different types of
lessons. Sometimes students learn new material during the lesson, sometimes, they
practice problem solving, sometimes they do a long lab, sometimes they summarize
and review material before a test, and sometimes they spend the whole class period
writing a test. Choose a unit of instruction - for example “Vibrations and Waves” and
suggest where in the unit different types of lesson might occur.
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V. Unit planning
1. Brainstorming
Think of what should be in a unit plan. The students will be working on a particular topic for
3-4 weeks - what should you be thinking as a teacher about when you plan such a unit?
Share your ideas with your peers and come to a consensus for what should go into a unit
plan.
2. Information
Below you see a possible outline for a unit plan. Reflect on every step - why is it needed?
How do the steps match to the list you made during the brainstorming session?
Unit plan
1. Title (for example, it can be Newton’s laws, Vibrations and Waves, Geometrical
optics, etc.)
2. Local and NGSS standards addressed in the unit. Explain why you chose those.
3.
Length total (days and periods).
4. What students should know and have done before the start of the unit.
5. Goals of the unit e.g. Disciplinary core ideas; Practices and Cross-cutting concepts
6. What evidence will convince you that students met the goals? List and describe.
7. Most important ideas in terms of the subject matter - describe in detail. List crosscurricula links.
8. Student potential difficulties and helpful prior knowledge. How can you help with
the former and build on the latter? Specific difficulties of ELL students.
9. Lessons outline – list all lessons in the unit with goals and brief descriptions. These
should be very short just to give a sense of the flow of the unit.
10. Relevance to students’ lives.
11. Final paper and pencil and performance-based summative assessment:
a. Unit test (expected high quality responses to each assignment included). Make sure
that your state the unit goals that you can assess with each assignment and no goals are
left unaddressed. Describe the grading scheme for the assessment.
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b. Performance assessment. Provide descriptions with brief guidelines for the students
and expected outcomes.
c. Student projects. Describe what they are and how you will provide guidance to the
students.
d. Out of classroom activities if appropriate (field trips, fun competitions, plays, etc.).
12. Modifications for different learners.
Describe alternative instructional strategies for diverse learners (i.e. ELL students,
students with disabilities, gifted students, minorities) such as the use of multi-sensory
teaching approaches, use of instructional technologies, accommodations for test taking
(e.g., extended time), advance organizers, peer tutoring and cooperative learning
activities.
13. List equipment for the unit and resources for the students.
14. List complete references to all resources you use as a teacher.
15. Reflect on the implementation of the unit including commentary on obstacles in
implementing it.
You saw that a part of the unit plan is the final test. Yes, this is right - you need to think of
the final test before you teach the unit - it will give you an idea about the level of difficulty of
the problems and assignments that you will implement in the unit. How does one write a
final test for the unit? The main idea is that the test should assess the goals you set for the
unit. It also needs to have a combination of problems - a few easy ones and a few difficult so
that all the students are challenged at the appropriate level and none feels frustrated that
the test is too difficult or too easy. Grading the test is also important - you need to decide
whether you will assign points for individual problems or for demonstrated skills. If you
wish to send the message to the students that their reasoning and not the final answer is
important, you can provide them with the numerical answers to the test problems (those
problems that call for the numerical answer) - this way the students will not worry whether
their answer is correct but will focus on the work. The length of the test is important too.
After you designed your test, solve it and time yourself. Multiple this number by at least 3 or
4 - this will be how long your students will need to do the same work. After timing yourself
you will decide whether the test you made is too short or too long. Make sure that you
include a variety of problem formats. For different formats consult PUM modules and the
following references
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
E. Etkina, M. Gentile, and A. Van Heuvelen, College Physics and The Active Learning
Guide, Pearson, 2014.

T. O’Kuma, D. Maloney, and C. Hieggelke, Ranking Task Exercises in Physics: Student
Edition, Pearson 2003.

Hieggelke, C., Kanim, S., Maloney, D., O'Kuma, T., TIPERs: Sense making Tasks for
Introductory Physics, Pearson, 2015
3. Activities
a)
Make a list of units that can potentially make up a physics course. Think the
sequence of topics. How can you decide what should come first and what should
follow?
b)
Examine the unit tests for the Kinematics and Dynamics units in the PUM Physics II
modules (both MC and Constructed response components). First solve each test
and time yourself. How long did it take? Next make a list of goals that the test
assesses. Which are content goals? Which are science practices goals? What are
question formats that you found in these tests?
c) Choose a unit on mechanical waves and write a unit plan following the guidelines in
part 2 and material in the Next Generation Science Standards.
Develop a scoring scheme for the test.
VI. Evaluation of teacher unit and lesson planning and assessment
1. Information
As you know, teachers are evaluated for their performance. Unit and lesson planning are a
part of this evaluation. There are multiple evaluation frameworks. One of them is the
Framework for Teaching and Evaluation by Charlotte Danielson
(http://danielsongroup.org/framework/). Download the 2013 Framework for Teaching
Evaluation Instrument and familiarize yourself with domain 1. Compare what you learned
in this module so far with the Danielson framework for teacher evaluation. Make a list of
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ideas that were familiar to you. Make a list of ideas that are new. How what you learned in
this framework will affect your approach to lesson and unit planning?
2. Activities
a) Use domain 1 a-f components to self-evaluate the lesson plan that you wrote.
b) Use the rubrics to improve the lesson plan
c) Reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of your original plan and discuss how
Danielson framework helped you improve it.
References:
ISLE-based references to help you with lesson and unit planning:
1. Etkina, E. & Van Heuvelen, A. (2007) Investigative Science Learning Environment - A
Science Process Approach to Learning Physics, in E. F. Redish and P. Cooney, (Eds.),
Research Based Reform of University Physics, (AAPT), Online at
http://per-central.org/per_reviews/media/volume1/ISLE-2007.pdf
2. http://pum.rutgers.edu
3. http://paer.rutgers.edu/pt3
4. E. Etkina, M. Gentile and A. Van Heuvelen, College Physics, AP edition, Pearson, 2014
(includes the textbook, the Active Learning Guide and the Instructor guide.
5. http://paer.rutgers.edu/scientificabilities
Other resources
1. http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards
2. http://diagnoser.com
3. http://phet.colorado.edu
4. http://modeling.asu.edu/ and http://modelinginstruction.org/
5. T. O’Kuma, D. Maloney, and C. Hieggelke, Ranking Task Exercises in Physics: Instructor
Edition, Pearson, 2003
6. C. Hieggelke, S. Kanim, D. Maloney, T. O'Kuma, TIPERs: Sense making Tasks for
Introductory Physics, Pearson, 2015.
7. http://danielsongroup.org/framework/
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