The COSMOS Optics Inquiry: An Inquiry Activity for High School Students on Geometric Optics

摘要

Within the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Sci-ence (COSMOS) program at UC Santa Cruz, an inquiry activity on geometric optics was designed and taught in a course led by Professional Development Program (PDP) participants. This inquiry was taught in five different years with class sizes from 15-18 students, ranging in age from recent 9~(th) graders to graduated seniors. The optics inquiry was designed to teach specific content about geometric optics and image formation, as , well as a number of inquiry process skills. Additionally, the inquiry was designed to ac-complish larger programmatic goals related to developing community and intellectual curiosity among the students. Because the students spanned a broad range in grade lev-. els, the diversity of prior knowledge and experience among the learners was one unique challenge we faced and addressed through the use of a tiered goal structure. This paper presents our goals, the basic activity design, and the assessments used to measure the student learning gains.