Pre/Post Test

1. List the three methods heat is transferred?

For the pre/post test, a majority of students correctly listed the three methods of heat transfer. This question ranked as the highest correctly answered question in both the pre/post tests. All students received full credit in the post-test.

2. Which surface will an ice cube melt the fastest on- plastic or aluminum? Explain.

In the post-test, all students stated the correct answer and, although, all students did provide an explanation some students’ explanations were more detailed than others. But all students did receive full credit on the post-test. In addition, it was a huge improvement from the pretest results, as all students were able to answer the question after conducting the ice cube

In the post-test, more students were able to answer the question correctly but either did not give an explanation or their explanation did not sufficiently explain their answer. For instance, one student correctly stated the sandy beach will cool down the fastest but their explanation was “because it is less dense than the water.” A correct explanation would have stated the high specific heat capacity of water that makes it slower to cool down as it maintains the same temperature throughout morning and night. Most students received partial credit for being able to name the sandy beach but were not successful in writing a good explanation.

4. What types of local wind (sea breeze/land breeze) would you experience if you were standing on the beach during the day? Explain.

A majority of students left this question blank in the pretest. In the post-test, students were able to state the correct answer but most students did not provide an explanation. But a few students who provided an explanation only stated that a land breeze occurs during the night but did not state the high-temperature absorption of sand during the day. Overall, students were able to answer the question correctly but either received partial credit for writing no explanation or writing an explanation that did support their stated

Analyzing patterns in data

During the lesson, some components such as, shorting the earth materials experiment and reducing questions asked to students had to be limited because of time constraints. Because of this, unfortunately, explaining the reasoning behind sand having a faster cooling period than water and differences between land and sea breezes had to be condensed. Students’ work showed the lack of understanding during the demonstrations in the teaching lesson and could be the reason behind students’ low results.

There was a sufficient increase in student mastery between the pre-assessment and post-assessment tests. In the pre-assessment, students were only able to correctly answer the first question and/or provided incorrect answers to the rest of the questions. In the post-assessment, there were no questions left blank and more students provided explanations.

There were no patterns in incorrect responses because most students wrote the correct answer but either did not give an explanation or their explanation did not fully explain their given answer. As previously stated, students lack of explanation might be due to the lesson being condensed and not having time to explain what high heat capacity is and how it relates to land and sea