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Mineola High School
The Physics Mousetrap Car Project
Vision
Mineola High School is invested in helping its 800 students integrate learning throughout their lives and attain "real world skills." Alternative assessment projects developed in the Science Department and other disciplines emphasize the kinds of cooperative and experiential learning that are essential for personal and professional growth. These projects reach students at all levels, in keeping with the school's movement away from ability--and towards heterogeneous--grouping. The changes in instruction and assessment practice necessitated by these projects are consistent with Mineola's school mission, which includes this statement: "We believe it is our responsibility to provide for different types of learning styles and, therefore, to use various modes of instructions. We seek to stimulate active learning and expose students to a broad spectrum of knowledge through a wide selection of courses, a variety of out-of-class activities, and supportive services ...We seek to integrate school learning with life experiences and to teach students to do the same. We contend that our heterogeneous population must be served on the basis of the students' varied needs and abilities."
The Mineola Mousetrap Car Project is an example of an alternative assessment project which has changed the structure of, and the evaluation of students in, the school's Regents Physics and Technical Physics 11 courses. In a two-month long project, students work in teams with their classmates to create a functioning vehicle from the base mechanism of a mousetrap spring. Building the car emphasizes the physics concepts of work, force, and torque, as well as the problem-solving skills required of scientists and engineers. In the Mousetrap Car Project, students learn about conceptual theories of motion through actual experimentation
(e.g., manipulating the wheel diameter to affect the speed or distance of a vehicle). In this and other ways, the Mousetrap Car Project reflects the Science Department's belief that "embedded assessment,
[and] utilizing a problem solving format, will provide both instruction and an evaluation of our students' achievement at a higher cognitive level."
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Page last updated: June 17, 2002
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