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PHYSICS FIRST RHODE ISLAND - Teaching of Science Reverses Course in Pilot Program - Physics is Foundation for Other Sciences

Posted on: Friday, 2 December 2005, 18:00 CST

By JOHN HILL Journal Staff Writer

LINCOLN - While the high school's new Physics First science curriculum will change how its students learn atomic, biological and chemical science, school officials say the really big bang is saved for the teachers.

Physics First, to be implemented in the next school year, takes the long-accepted method of teaching high school science -- biology for freshmen, chemistry for sophomores, physics for juniors and seniors -- and reverses it, moving physics to the ninth grade, followed by chemistry and biology. But Thomas A. Reeve, a high school physics teacher who wrote the school system's successful grant application for the new program, said it is more than just shuffling the academic deck.

Physics teachers in the current system are accustomed to getting students with two or three years' experience in other sciences, and teaching advanced courses with a small number of students.

In a Physics First universe, that changes. Physics teachers will have larger classes full of students with much less of a science background. Teachers can't just bring their current books and lesson plans and present them to a bigger, younger class, he said.

"It will be more conceptual, not so mathematically driven," Reeve said of the new ninth-grade physics compared with its 11th- and 12th- grade versions. "We'll incorporate math, but in a different way."

Physics can't be looked at as inhabiting its own world, Reeve said. The new physics curriculum will have to be developed based on what the students need to know about the subject itself and with what they'll need to know for the next year's chemistry course, and biology the year after that.

"The transition will be difficult," he said. "It tends to have the biggest impact on the physics teachers. For chemistry and biology, they're just trading a year."

The idea behind teaching physics first is that the things students learn there, the structure of matter, energy, and how they interact, are important to understanding chemistry. And you can't understand biology unless you get chemistry first, Supt. John Tindall-Gibson said.

Reeve said teachers are willing to endure the difficult implementation because the system makes sense to them.

"For biology, it's a godsend," he said. "They ended up taking some time to teach chemistry and physics. This makes the subjects flow in a more natural order."

Lincoln High School is one of five schools in the state that have been chosen to participate in the pilot program. The National Governors' Association is contributing $125,000 for teacher training and Governor Carcieri has said he'll propose $450,000 in state money for new textbooks and equipment.

High school principal Robert Martin said the timing was fortunate for Lincoln, as it was getting ready to review its science curriculum anyway, so it'll be easier to incorporate the changes.

Tindall-Gibson said the changes are part of a national effort to improve the nation's output of engineers, to catch up to such countries as Japan and China.

The attraction of the program is that the new lineup of courses is educationally more sound and scientifically more logical, Tindall- Gibson said. The current progression of courses was developed in the 1890s, he said. Since then, science had evolved but in this country, teaching it hadn't.

"Other countries have done this," he said. "Fifty years ago 'made in Japan' meant it was cheap, now it means it's in the forefront of technology. Fifty years from now 'made in China' will be the forefront of technology. We have to compete."

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Lincoln High School physics teacher Thomas Reeve talks about the changes coming next year to the way science courses are taught in schools today.

JOURNAL PHOTO / STEVE SZYDLOWSKI

Source: Providence Journal

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