1. More fun with FRQ’s

2. Your physics teacher, Mr
Your physics teacher, Mr. Nye, challenges your group to design a plan for a bridge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks. You originally think of using the cinder blocks as support under the planks, but then your group realizes they could be used as a counterweight on the end of the planks. Explain some of the reasoning processes your group may have used while working on this project. Use the following concepts in your response: • Schema • Assimilation • Formal operations • Heuristic

3. Your physics teacher, Mr
Your physics teacher, Mr. Nye, challenges your group to design a plan for a bridge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks. You originally think of using the cinder blocks as support under the planks, but then your group realizes they could be used as a counterweight on the end of the planks. Explain some of the reasoning processes your group may have used while working on this project. Use the following concepts in your response: • Schema

4. Initially, when the students are presented with the challenge of designing a brindge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks, the mental image of the wood as the bridge and the blocks as the support under the planks fits easily into the students’ existing mental framework, or schema, that would mentally organize materials to build a bridge in the most typical or easily imaginable way.
Point 1: Schema: Students should describe the initial schema involved in the problem: viewing the cinder blocks as support. The concept or framework for cinder blocks involved their typical use as a support structure. This schema may be later changed…

5. Your physics teacher, Mr
Your physics teacher, Mr. Nye, challenges your group to design a plan for a bridge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks. You originally think of using the cinder blocks as support under the planks, but then your group realizes they could be used as a counterweight on the end of the planks. Explain some of the reasoning processes your group may have used while working on this project. Use the following concepts in your response: • Assimilation

6. The students’ initial reaction to the materials available in the most predictable and typical way was an example of assimilation or interpreting new experiences in terms of existing schemas. So the wood was interpreted as the planks that one would walk on and the blocks were thought of as the heavy support on each end because that was their existing concept of how to use these materials. Example (a drawing would be ok here):
Point 2: Assimilation: Students should explain that initially the stimuli of boards and cinder blocks were interpreted through the existing schema (assimilation). For example, the cinder blocks were first interpreted as a support structure, because that was the existing schema (mental framework) for the cinder blocks.

7. So far, so good?

8. Your physics teacher, Mr
Your physics teacher, Mr. Nye, challenges your group to design a plan for a bridge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks. You originally think of using the cinder blocks as support under the planks, but then your group realizes they could be used as a counterweight on the end of the planks. Explain some of the reasoning processes your group may have used while working on this project. Use the following concepts in your response: • Formal operations

9. However, because these students are mature enough for abstract thought, they were able to imagine using the materials is ways that were not as typical and didn’t fit in their original schema. The ability to think abstractly requires what Piaget called the formal operational stage of cognitive development. If these students had been younger they may not have been able to come up with any other way to build the bridge than those that fit their current schemas.
Point 3: Formal operations: Students should explain that reasoning through this problem involved hypothetical reasoning, which is typical of the formal operations stage. Younger students who are not yet in formal operations would have more difficulty considering the hypothetical solution to this problem.

10. Your physics teacher, Mr
Your physics teacher, Mr. Nye, challenges your group to design a plan for a bridge using five wooden planks and three cinder blocks. You originally think of using the cinder blocks as support under the planks, but then your group realizes they could be used as a counterweight on the end of the planks. Explain some of the reasoning processes your group may have used while working on this project. Use the following concepts in your response: • Heuristic

11. It is unlikely that the students used an algorithmic approach to solving this challenge because considering every possible solution or approach would be extremely time consuming. Instead, a heuristic, or problem solving shortcut, would make much more sense. Someone in the group may have just considered the weight of the blocks and then voiced the idea that instead of putting the blocks under the wood, they might consider putting them on top of the planks to hold them in place. Then the group would try this and go from there.
Point 4: Heuristic: Students should explain that the group likely used heuristic (mental shortcuts) rather than algorithms to solve the problem. The group probably used their past experiences with planks and cinder blocks to suggest likely solutions rather than testing each possible solution.

12. Questions?