Oklahoma Experience Physics – Oklahoma Physics Curriculum

Oklahoma Experience Physics® is a next-generation high school physics program that puts the focus on the student experience. This modern program implements a learning model that organizes learning around phenomena, giving students an authentic, real-world experience. Oklahoma Experience Physics includes a variety of hands-on and digital activities designed to reach every learner. Students complete hands-on inquiry labs, virtual labs, simulations, data analysis, claim-evidence-reasoning exercises, and more on their sensemaking journey. An assessment package with formative, summative, and performance-based assessments provides opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding three-dimensionally. Instructors have access to a robust support package with print and digital resources designed to streamline classroom management.

The program components include:

• Oklahoma Experience Physics digital courseware on Savvas Realize® includes robust digital tools that give teachers the flexibility to use digital, print, or blended formats in their classrooms. Teachers can customize the program to rearrange content, upload their own content, add links to online media, and edit resources and assessments. Program-specific resources, flexible agnostic resources, and assessments are available in one location for easy lesson planning and presentation.
• Teacher Guide - Available in digital and print, the Teacher Guide provides robust lesson planners based on the 5E learning model, explicit directions and explanations for introducing phenomena, instructional strategies that support students as they make sense of the phenomena, and classroom modifications to adjust instruction based on the diverse student needs, skills, and interests in their classroom. 
• Student Handbook - Oklahoma Experience Physics® transforms the traditional textbook into a modern interactive handbook that students will actually use. With Oklahoma Experience Physics, students DO physics first by interacting with phenomena and completing hands-on and virtual inquiry activities. Then students complete readings, formative assessments, and math practice in their Student Experience Handbook.
• Student Math Skills Workbook - This student worktext, available in digital and print formats, includes four pages of practice for every learning experience. This resource reinforces physics content knowledge and three-dimensional learning with visual summaries of the main ideas and interactive prompts that support problem-solving skills. 
• Flinn Scientific Lab Kits - Flinn Scientific is our partner for the Oklahoma Experience Physics curriculum. Optional lab kits are available for each program. Every Flinn Scientific kit supports a classroom of approximately 30 students. Refill kits are also available.

The Oklahoma Experience Physics curriculum is organized around phenomena. The program drives student learning through a series of hands-on and virtual student experiences that support their understanding of the phenomenon under study. Students directly engage with different examples of phenomena that relate to authentic real-world scenarios.

Every Storyline (the unit of instruction) launches inquiry with an Anchoring Phenomenon video and demonstration. This real-world science phenomenon sparks curiosity as students make observations and ask questions, giving them a purpose as they engage in activities to make sense of it and connect physics concepts through a unique occurrence. Throughout the Storyline, students revisit the anchoring phenomenon question and discuss the problem's real-world impact as they propose solutions. By the end of the storyline, students can explain the anchoring phenomenon.

A real-world Investigative Phenomenon video and demonstration launches every Investigation (chapter-level organization). Students again ask questions, make observations, and track their understanding of the phenomenon in Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) or Modeling exercises. At the end of each Experience, students revisit their CER worksheet in a sense-making exercise to review, revise, or add to their explanation of how the phenomenon occurs, thereby building understanding over time. At the end of the Investigation, students once again are able to explain the phenomenon under study.

The lessons, called Experiences, are where students encounter everyday phenomena through Flinn Scientific Inquiry Labs, PhET simulations, digital interactivities, videos, teacher demonstrations, modeling activities, data analysis activities, peer review and more. This wide variety of real-world experiences builds students' understanding of DCIs, CCCs, and SEPs through interactions with phenomena over time.

The Oklahoma Experience Physics® program includes a variety of resources and instructional strategies that help teachers address the diverse student needs, skills, and interests in their classroom. There are several techniques that are found throughout the different Storylines and Investigations, including:

• Hands-on Inquiry Labs are available in four different versions, allowing instructors to differentiate based on student needs, abilities, and time constraints. The four versions are open-ended, guided, advanced, and short. 
• Assess on the Spot: Quick formative assessments designed to assess understanding of key points in the lab or lesson. 
• Differentiated Instruction: Throughout the teacher guide narrative, explicit strategies are provided to support struggling students, students with special needs, and advanced students. 
• Remediation Suggestions can be found at the Evaluate phase of the learning model to help educators troubleshoot student weaknesses. 
• Teacher Guide margin notes, like Classroom Modifications, include ideas for modifying aspects of the classroom or lesson.
• WIDA Support addresses the different levels of English Language Development (Speaking/Writing, Entering, Beginning, Developing, Expanding, Bridging) to support students who are acquiring English.
• Experience It! provides teacher support to connect the kinesthetic activity, Experience It!, to an important concept in the experience. 
• Math support is provided to assist students who struggle with essential mathematical concepts for physics success and includes resources such as Math Tutorial Videos.

The instructional model is based on research conducted by the Instructional Leadership for Science Practices (ILSP), a National Science Foundation project whose goal was to develop tools that support educators in the integration of the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) along with the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Per ILSP’s framework, the science and engineering practices provide a pathway for students to engage sequentially in the processes of investigation, sense-making, and critique.

This approach has been adapted by incorporating the BSCS 5E Model to round out the five-stage learning progression: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. The role of phenomena has been intensified in pedagogy to address the need for phenomenon-based learning opportunities as outlined in the NGSS.

Oklahoma Experience Physics® digital courseware on Savvas Realize™ includes robust digital tools that give teachers flexibility to use a digital, print, or blended format in their classrooms. Teachers can customize the program to rearrange content, upload their own content, add links to online media, and edit resources and assessments. Program-specific resources, flexible agnostic resources, and assessments are available in one location for easy lesson planning and presentation. Click here to sign up for a demo of Oklahoma Experience Physics.

Flinn Scientific is our partner for the Oklahoma Experience Physics curriculum. Optional lab kits are available for each program. Every Flinn Scientific kit supports a classroom of approximately 30 students. Refill kits are also available.

Storyline 1 – Forces in Motion

Investigation 1: Describing Position and Motion (or Modeling Motion)

• Experience 1- Displacement and Velocity
• Experience 2- Acceleration
• Experience 3- Circular and Projectile Motion

Investigation 2: Forces

• Experience 1- Force, Mass, and Acceleration
• Experience 2- Types of Forces
• Experience 3- Forces on Systems
• Experience 4- Earth Processes and Forces

Storyline 2 – Forces at a Distance

Investigation 3: Gravitational Forces

• Experience 1- Universal Gravitation
• Experience 2- Orbital Motion
• Experience 3- Kepler’s Laws

Investigation 4: Electric Forces

• Experience 1- Coulomb’s Law
• Experience 2- Electric Fields
• Experience 3- Electric Current

Investigation 5: Magnetic Forces

• Experience 1- Magnetism
• Experience 2- Magnetic Fields
• Experience 3- Inducing Current

Investigation 6: Forces in Materials

• Experience 1- Atoms and Atomic Structure
• Experience 2- Attractive and Repulsive Forces
• Experience 3- Material Properties
• Experience 4- Structure and Function

Storyline 3 – Energy Conversion

Investigation 7: Energy

• Experience 1- Classifying Energy and Work
• Experience 2- Kinetic and Potential Energy
• Experience 3- Conservation of Energy

Investigation 8: Collisions

• Experience 1- Momentum and Impulse
• Experience 2- Conservation of Momentum
• Experience 3- Collisions in Earth’s Crust

Investigation 9: Thermal Energy

• Experience 1- Temperature
• Experience 2- Thermal Equilibrium and Heat Flow
• Experience 3- Heat Flow Within Earth

Investigation 10: Electromagnetic Energy

• Experience 1- Electric Potential
• Experience 2- Energy in Electric Circuits
• Experience 3- Power Generation
• Experience 4- Energy Resources and Conservation

Storyline 4 – Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

Investigation 11: Waves

• Experience 1- Properties of Waves
• Experience 2- Wave Behavior and Energy
• Experience 3- Wave Optics

Investigation 12: Electromagnetic Radiation

• Experience 1- Electromagnetic Waves and Their Properties
• Experience 2- Particle-Wave Duality
• Experience 3- EM Radiation and Matter

Investigation 13: Information and Instrumentation

• Experience 1- Digital Information
• Experience 2- Transmitting and Capturing Information
• Experience 3- Transmitting and Capturing Energy

Storyline 5 – From the Nucleus to the Universe

Investigation 14: Nuclear Physics

• Experience 1- Nuclear Forces
• Experience 2- Nuclear Particles
• Experience 3- Fission and Fusion

Investigation 15: Ages of Rocks

• Experience 1- Radioactive Decay
• Experience 2- Radiometric Dating
• Experience 3- Exploring Patterns in the Ages of Rocks

Investigation 16: The Universe

• Experience 1- Stars
• Experience 2- The Sun
• Experience 3- The Big Bang