Experience Physics – High School Physics Curriculum

What is Experience Physics and what are its components?

Experience Physics® is a next generation high school physics program that puts the focus on the student experience. This modern program implements a learning model that organizes learning around phenomena giving students an authentic, real-world experience. Experience Physics includes a variety of hands-on and digital activities designed to reach every learner. Students complete hands-on inquiry labs, virtual labs, simulations, data analysis, claim-evidence reasoning exercises and more on their sensemaking journey. An assessment package with formative, summative, performance-based assessments provide opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding three dimensionally. Instructors have access to a robust support package with print and digital resources designed to streamline classroom management.

Take an Interactive Tour of Experience Physics.
The program components include:
Experience Physics digital courseware on Savvas Realize® includes robust digital tools that give teachers flexibility to use a digital, print, or blended format in their classrooms. Teachers can customize the program to rearrange content, upload their own content, add links to online media, and edit resources and assessments. Program-specific resources, flexible agnostic resources, and assessments are available in one location for easy lesson planning and presentation.

Teacher Guide - Available in digital and print, the Teacher Guide provides robust lesson planners based on the 5E learning model, explicit directions and explanations for introducing phenomena, instructional strategies support students as they make sense of the phenomena, and classroom modifications to adjust instruction based on the diverse student needs, skills, and interests in their classroom.

Student Handbook - Experience Physics® transforms the traditional textbook into a modern interactive handbook that students will actually use. With Experience Physics, students DO physics first, by interacting with phenomena and completing hands-on and virtual inquiry activities. Then students complete readings, formative assessments, and math practice in their Student Experience Handbook.

Student Math Skills Workbook - This student worktext, available in digital and print, includes four pages of practice for every learning experience. This resource reinforces physics content knowledge and three dimensional learning with visual summaries of the main ideas and interactive prompts that support problem solving skills.
Flinn Scientific Lab Kits - Flinn Scientific is our partner for the Experience Physics curriculums. Optional lab kits are available for each program. Every Flinn Scientific kit supports a classroom of approximately 30 students. Refill kits are also available.

The Experience Physics curriculum is organized around phenomena. The program drives student learning through a series of hands-on and virtual student experiences that support their understanding of the phenomenon under study. Students directly engage with different examples of phenomena that relate to authentic real-world scenarios.

Every Storyline (the unit of instruction) launches inquiry with an Anchoring Phenomenon video and demonstration. This real-world science phenomenon sparks curiosity as students make observations and ask questions while giving students a purpose as they engage in activities to make sense of this phenomenon and connect physics concepts through a unifying unique occurrence. Throughout the Storyline, students revisit the anchoring phenomenon question and discuss the real-world impact of the problem as they propose solutions. By the end of the storyline, students are able to explain the anchoring phenomenon.

A real-world Investigative Phenomenon video and demonstration launches every Investigation (chapter level organization). Students again ask questions, make observations, and track their understanding of the phenomenon in Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) or Modeling exercises. At the end of each Experience students revisit their CER worksheet in a sense-making exercise to review, revise or add to their explanation of how the phenomenon occurs – thus building understanding over time. At the end of the Investigation, students once again are able to explain the phenomenon under study.

The lessons, called Experiences, are where students encounter everyday phenomena through Flinn Scientific Inquiry Labs, PhET simulations, digital interactivities, videos, teacher demonstrations, modeling activities, data analysis activities, peer review and more. This wide variety of real-world experiences builds student understanding using DCIs, CCCs, and SEPs by interacting with phenomena over time.

The Experience Physics® program includes a variety of resources and instructional strategies that help teachers address the diverse student needs, skills, and interests in their classroom. There are several techniques which are found throughout the different Storylines and Investigations including:

Hands-on Inquiry Labs are available in four different versions, allowing instructors to differentiate based on student needs and abilities and time constraints. The four versions are open-ended, guided, advanced and short.

Assess on the Spot: Quick formative assessments designed to assess understanding of key points in the lab or lesson.

Differentiated Instruction: In the course of the teacher guide narrative, explicit strategies are provided to support struggling students, students with special needs, and advanced students.

Remediation Suggestions can be found at the Evaluate phase of the learning model to help educators troubleshoot student weaknesses.

Teacher Guide margin notes, like Classroom Modifications include ideas for modifying aspects of the classroom or lesson.

WIDA Support addresses the different levels (Speaking/Writing, Entering, Beginning, Developing, Expanding, Bridging) of English Language Development to support students who are acquiring the English language.

Experience It!: provides teacher support to help connect the kinesthetic activity, Experience It, to an important concept in the experience. Math support is provided to assist those students who struggle with the essential mathematical concepts necessary for physics success and include resources like Math Tutorial Videos.

The instructional model is based on research conducted by the Instructional Leadership for Science Practices (ILSP), a National Science Foundation project whose goal was to develop tools that support educators in the integration of the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) along with the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Per ILSP’s framework, the science and engineering practices provide a pathway for students to engage sequentially in the processes of investigation, sense-making, and critique.

This approach has been adapted by incorporating BSCS 5E Model to round out the five-stage learning progression: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. The role of phenomena has been intensified in the pedagogy in order to address the need for phenomenon-based learning opportunities as outlined in the NGSS.

Experience Physics® digital courseware on Savvas Realize™ includes robust digital tools that give teachers flexibility to use a digital, print, or blended format in their classrooms. Teachers can customize the program to rearrange content, upload their own content, add links to online media, and edit resources and assessments. Program-specific resources, flexible agnostic resources, and assessments are available in one location for easy lesson planning and presentation. Click here to sign up for a demo of Experience Physics.

 
Storyline 1 – Forces in Motion

Investigation 1: Describing Position and Motion (or Modeling Motion)
Experience 1- Displacement and Velocity
Experience 2- Acceleration
Experience 3- Circular and Projectile Motion

Investigation 2: Forces
Experience 1- Force, Mass, and Acceleration
Experience 2- Types of Forces
Experience 3- Forces on Systems
Experience 4- Earth Processes and Forces


Storyline 2 – Forces at a Distance

Investigation 3: Gravitational Forces
Experience 1- Universal Gravitation
Experience 2- Orbital Motion
Experience 3- Kepler’s Laws
Investigation 4: Electric Forces
Experience 1- Coulomb’s Law
Experience 2- Electric Fields
Experience 3- Electric Current

Investigation 5: Magnetic Forces
Experience 1- Magnetism
Experience 2- Magnetic Fields
Experience 3- Inducing Current

Investigation 6: Forces in Materials
Experience 1- Atoms and Atomic Structure
Experience 2- Attractive and Repulsive Forces
Experience 3- Material Properties
Experience 4- Structure and Function

Storyline 3 – Energy Conversion

Investigation 7: Energy
Experience 1- Classifying Energy and Work
Experience 2- Kinetic and Potential Energy
Experience 3- Conservation of Energy

Investigation 8: Collisions
Experience 1- Momentum and Impulse
Experience 2- Conservation of Momentum
Experience 3- Collisions in Earth’s Crust

Investigation 9: Thermal Energy
Experience 1- Temperature
Experience 2- Thermal Equilibrium and Heat Flow
Experience 3- Heat Flow Within Earth

Investigation 10: Electromagnetic Energy
Experience 1- Electric Potential
Experience 2- Energy in Electric Circuits
Experience 3- Power Generation
Experience 4- Energy Resources and Conservation

Storyline 4 – Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

Investigation 11: Waves
Experience 1- Properties of Waves
Experience 2- Wave Behavior and Energy
Experience 3- Wave Optics

Investigation 12: Electromagnetic Radiation
Experience 1- Electromagnetic Waves and Their Properties
Experience 2- Particle-Wave Duality
Experience 3- EM Radiation and Matter

Investigation 13: Information and Instrumentation
Experience 1- Digital Information
Experience 2- Transmitting and Capturing Information
Experience 3- Transmitting and Capturing Energy


Storyline 5 – From the Nucleus to the Universe

Investigation 14: Nuclear Physics
Experience 1- Nuclear Forces
Experience 2- Nuclear Particles
Experience 3- Fission and Fusion

Investigation 15: Ages of Rocks
Experience 1- Radioactive Decay
Experience 2- Radiometric Dating

Experience 3- Exploring Patterns in the Ages of Rocks
Investigation 16: The Universe
Experience 1- Stars
Experience 2- The Sun
Experience 3- The Big Bang