Web Lesson

Teacher: Kurt Wood
Course: Physics1 AB

California State Standards Covered: 1b,c,d,h,j,k (click to view)

Content: The lesson in this case is an entire chapter, including a chapter review sheet, posted on the class website. Click here to view this document. Students were instructed over a 2 week period using a variety of strategies and then directed to study the review sheet and use the sample and practice problems to practice for the test.

Strategies employed to help males perform well:

• efforts were made to organize the material logically and visually.
• Each lesson was limited to one topic and one or two problem types with repeated practice. In the past I have tended to move too quickly through material, trying to double-up on lessons and losing students in the process. This time I made a concerted effort to slow the instruction down and reduce breadth in favor of increased practice on a more limited set of problem types.
• A lab investigated was carried out in which students first explored a phenomenon in an open-ended manner, decided upon an experimental question they wished to investigate, then designed and carried out a lab activity. It was assumed that by making the lab open-ended, where the students chose their question and designed the lab themselves, the students would experience a sense of freedom and responsibility for their work which would engage and motivate them, ehhancing their learning experience.
• Some lessons involved physical activities or extremely physical demonstrations. Lectures involved considerable moving about the classroom, humor and a large degree of teacher-student interaction, all to keep interest level high.
• Lectures were kept short and a large portion of class time was devoted to practice in groups od 4-5 students.
• Students carried out a creative project in groups, consisting of constructing a model bridge of popsicle sticks and string. These bridges were tested during a class tournament with extra credit points awarded to the builders of the winning bridge. Friendly competition was assumed to be a help to male students.

Strategies to aid in reading comprehension:

• Students were not required to read their textbook as such. They were encouraged to read in order to enhance their class learning experience.
• Students were offered an extra credit assignment of evaluating Physics-related web sites for adding to our website list.
• The review sheet contained a concise outline of conceptual knowledge.
• Review activities included a practice test with wording similar to the actual test.

Evaluation Instrument: A test was administered, consisting of 10 multiple choice questions, 9 short written answer questions and 1 open problem.

Results: 45 males and 42 females took the test. The scores were adjusted from their raw values to normalize the distribution. The average score for each of the gender groups is given here

Males 81%
Females 80%

Conclusions: There was no statistical difference between the performance of males and that of females on the test. Due to the absence of a control group, it is impossible to assert whether the strategies employed actually had a significant impact on performance. Due to the fact that multiple strategies were employed at the same time, it is not possible to conjecture which strategies were effective and which were not. However the results to indicate that at least some of the strategies employed were probably instrumental in encouraging both genders to perform equally and in assisting in comprehension of the test questions.