Little Elm

Teacher's Shift to Engaging Experiments Is Improving Test Scores in Physics

Little Elm High School's physics class has students honing in on academic progress

NBCUniversal, Inc.

Walk down the hall at Little Elm High School and you might hear stumble across some students, cheering like they won the Super Bowl. It's not a football, but leftover Halloween candy flung through the air with mathematical precision.

Teacher Gage Marshall says he realized the method they were teaching physics just wasn't sinking in.

"We forced the math, you're going to do this, then this, two weeks on this," he said. "This is an experiment. We're always experimenting."

So they put away the calculators and picked up popsicle sticks.

"We had to construct stuff out of popsicle sticks, a spoon, and rubber bands. the objective was we had to launch it two meters and it had to be over a half a meter," said TJ Thayer, a student in the course.

The students broke out their notes from class and honed in on what it would take to hit their goals in a competition to see who could not only move pieces of candy corn further but justify how, using the material learned.

The students experimented, to find success, not knowing the whole activity was their teacher's experiment, to find a different way to get them to retain the material.

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