Which Factors Affect Your Reaction Time?

In this task, students will learn how to measure reaction time and then they will explore how various factors affect their individual reaction time as well as the reaction time of other students in class.

This guide provides you with the information you need in order to prepare students for the Grade 9 Living Environment Reaction Time Lab performance assessment. In order for students to participate in this assessment they need to complete the guided and inquiry Reaction Time lab activities during the assessment administration window. The full assessment (4 sessions of approximately 45 minutes each) takes students through four different activities:

1. A Guided Lab Activity, during which students learn how to use the lab measurement technique and have the opportunity to perform a simple experiment and collect data.
2. An Independent Lab Design and Performance during which students have the opportunity to ask their own questions and use the technique they have learned before to design, conduct and analyze data from their own experiments.
3. Lab report writing where students document the experiments they have conducted and analyze the results. This independent lab report will be scored as part of the assessment.
4. Post Lab constructed response items where students have to answer several open- ended inquiry items. This test is designed to explore and improve the validity of the inquiry assessment.