Principal Investigator: Joseph Krajcik
Project Partners: Concord Consortium
Award Amount: $1.8M
Funder: National Science Foundation
Interactions support students in building competency in the scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas defined in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The Interactions materials were designed as a 9th-grade physical science course to support students in building a strong foundation of key concepts in the physical sciences and prepare them for excellence in upper-level physical science courses both in high school and college.
This project-based, NGSS-aligned curriculum is designed to support high school physical science students in developing an understanding of the forces and energy involved in atomic and molecular interactions. The year-long Interactions curriculum could be used in a physical science class or adjusted to embed activities into a chemistry class. Interactions can be offered as a paper-pencil curriculum with the teacher facilitating web-based simulation activities on a classroom computer, or it can be offered completely online for classrooms where students have personal (or shared) computers.
