What West Virginia Teachers Teach While WVGSA Runs

Quick answer: WVGSA reaches grades 3-8 and grade 11, so West Virginia physics teachers lose juniors from the middle of the science schedule for part of the spring. Use those weeks for measurement-based work that closes inside a period, keep the field and circuit units where they have consecutive days, and grade what the lesson itself produces.

Which physics classes does the WVGSA window actually touch?

Because the West Virginia General Summative Assessment includes grade 11, the students it removes are often the ones sitting in your physics or physical science sections. Testing schedules are built at county level, so the window, the make-up days and the room reassignments arrive as a fixture rather than a negotiation. Knowing the dates in January is worth more than any amount of adjustment in April.

Elementary colleagues are carrying something else at the same time. West Virginia's Third Grade Success Act requires literacy screening and intervention in the early grades, which occupies specialist staff and shared spaces through the same part of the year. In a building where the science room doubles as the intervention room, that is not an abstract policy point.

What can I teach when half the class is testing?

Machines are the practical answer. Levers and pulleys need a single cart of equipment, produce a number in one period, and let a returning student repeat a measurement in ten minutes without a reteach. They also set up work and energy properly, so the fortnight is not a detour from the sequence but the entry point to the next unit.

Levers & Pulleys – Physics Resource for Middle School (Grades 7–10) runs that way for grades 7-10, with each task self-contained and the calculation kept to what a student can finish before the bell. Share one equipment set across sections instead of building elaborate stations, since rooms move during testing. Whatever a group measures should end up written down that day, because you may not see them again until Monday.

Where should the demanding units sit in the year?

Electric and magnetic fields do not survive a broken schedule. Field lines, potential and the Lorentz force build on one another across several lessons, and a student who misses the middle of the chain reads the last lesson as unrelated symbols. Placing that unit in a stretch of intact weeks is the single most useful scheduling decision a West Virginia physics teacher makes.

When it does run, run it from a sequence rather than assembling lessons nightly. Electric & Magnetic Fields | Potential, Capacitors & the Lorentz Force | Physics Unit | Honors & AP orders the fields material for honors and advanced classes with worked examples and answer keys, so a covered lesson still moves forward. Teachers looking for the rest of the state's listings, elementary through high school, can start from the West Virginia Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12) collection.

How do I get graded evidence out of a testing fortnight?

Score the measurement work as it stands. A table of loads and distances, an efficiency calculation and one sentence explaining the loss to friction is defensible evidence against the West Virginia College- and Career-Readiness Standards, and it takes minutes to check. Small, frequent entries also protect a student who missed two of your five periods that week.

Planning further ahead, a teacher covering physics across several grades usually needs one format rather than three. Energy, Pressure & Thermal Physics Bundle | Work, Fluids & Thermodynamics | 3 Complete Units | Grades 8–12 carries three complete units for grades 8-12, which suits a county school where one person owns the whole physics sequence. Consistency also helps a substitute keep a lesson moving. Schools comparing arrangements elsewhere can browse the State Standards Navigator: Teaching Resources by State collection for the equivalent state listings.

Frequently asked questions

Are these resources approved by the West Virginia Department of Education?

No. These are independent teaching materials and are not affiliated with, approved by, or endorsed by the West Virginia Department of Education or any assessment provider. Teachers align them to the West Virginia College- and Career-Readiness Standards themselves, as with any commercially published unit.

Is it worth teaching new content during the window at all?

Yes, provided each lesson is complete in itself. New material taught as a self-contained task works; new material that assumes yesterday's lesson does not. The clearest rule is to ask whether a student who missed the previous period could join today's work with a two-sentence introduction.

What about students who miss several lessons for make-up testing?

Give them the measurement task rather than the notes. Repeating an experiment takes one period and produces the same evidence you graded for everyone else, while copied notes produce nothing you can assess. Keeping the equipment out for an extra day is usually cheaper than arranging a separate catch-up session.

Related reading

• West Virginia Physics: Planning a Unit to the Standards
• Running a Physics Unit When You Need Graded Evidence in West Virginia
• West Virginia Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12)