SURGE Curriculum Design
The SURGE project is creating, implementing, and evaluating a two-week long, standards-based, 8th grade curriculum addressing core national and Arizona standards for force and motion, including advanced concepts from the high school standards. This curriculum will include assessment tools for measuring student learning in terms of physics content and problem solving skills building on cutting-edge conceptual change and misconceptions research to facilitate teachers’ insightful formative assessment of students’ understandings in addition to standard summative assessment functionalities.
Curriculum Outline (Instructional Goals and Relevant Standards Addressed)
| Unit | Instructional Goals | NSES | AAAS | AZ |
| U1 R1 | Newton’s 1st Law: An object will continue to travel in a straight line at a constant speed unless a net force acts on it. | 8th 12th |
8th | 8th 12th |
| U1 R1 | Frictional and gravitational forces: Understanding the effect of frictional and gravitational forces on the motion of objects. | 8th 12th |
8th 12th |
12th |
| U2 R2 R5 | Newton’s 2nd Law: F=ma. Examining the relationship between net force, mass, and acceleration; using vectors to determine net force. | 8th 12th |
12th | 8th 12th |
| U2 R2 R6 | Basic kinematics: Describing motion and recognizing the relationships among position, velocity, and acceleration. | 8th 12th |
8th | 8th 12th |
| U3 R3 | Newton’s 3rd Law: When one object exerts a force on another, a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction is exerted on first object. | 12th | 12th | 8th 12th |
| U3 R3 | Momentum: Role of momentum in collisions between objects. | 12th | ||
| U4 R4 | Inertial reference frames. | 12th |
