FundaFirst HS gives physics teachers the diagnostic tools to surface the exact misconceptions their students hold — in kinematics and Newton's laws — and a clear pathway to address them. Free classroom pilots with class-level heatmaps delivered within 48 hours of completion.
Students who score well on formula-based tests often perform worst on conceptual questions. They can calculate without understanding. They don't know what they don't know — and neither do their teachers, until exam results arrive.
Decades of physics education research document persistent misconceptions that survive conventional teaching. A student may solve F = ma problems yet believe a tossed ball carries an upward "force of the throw." The formula hides the failure.
Most physics departments lack tools to systematically surface misconceptions before summative assessments. Teachers discover gaps too late — through exam results instead of targeted diagnostics.
We don't start with the right answers. We start with the wrong ones — because that's where real learning begins. Our approach is grounded in standardised diagnostic instruments like the FCI and TUG-K, and three decades of published physics education research — not opinion.
Every diagnostic uses the same rigorous framework: surface the specific misconception, create cognitive conflict that destabilizes it, then provide structured guidance for rebuilding understanding from first principles. The traps we target are documented across multiple research traditions — from Trowbridge & McDermott's position-velocity confusion studies to Hestenes' Force Concept Inventory and beyond.
Carefully designed diagnostic assessments surface the specific misconceptions a student holds — not just whether they got the answer right, but which wrong mental model they're using. Students are mapped to misconception clusters with clear intervention pathways.
We present scenarios designed to make the misconception fail. When a student's wrong model produces an absurd prediction, the cognitive conflict creates genuine readiness for the correct concept. This is trap-first teaching — it works because it respects how minds actually change.
Only after the old model is destabilized do we introduce operational definitions and correct frameworks. Students build understanding from first principles — not from memorized formulas, but from deeply held intuition about what concepts actually mean.
Covers events & position, graph reading, distance vs displacement, average speed & velocity, instantaneous velocity, and estimation. One sitting, one shared link, no student accounts needed.
Six focused modules: inertia & impetus, force-motion relationships, contact forces & N3, free-body diagrams, applied forces & friction, and Newton's third law in context. Run one module or the full set.
Every diagnostic follows the same research-backed framework: diagnose, confront, reconstruct. As the arc grows, teachers gain an interconnected toolkit for building real conceptual understanding — not a collection of disconnected test-prep drills, but a coherent diagnostic layer for the entire physics syllabus.
Operational definitions, displacement, velocity, graph interpretation, and the traps that live in kinematics.
Inertia, force-motion relationships, contact forces, free-body diagrams, friction, and Newton's third law — six focused modules.
Five persistent kinematics misconceptions — from the Hill Illusion to the Chord–Tangent Confusion — with an example diagnostic heatmap and a clear explanation of how the classroom pilot works.
Download the Motion GuideFive persistent forces misconceptions — from the Impetus Belief to the Ghost Force — with an example diagnostic heatmap and details on the six-module diagnostic pilot.
Download the Forces GuideEvery student mapped against every question, colour-coded by correctness. Misconception clusters are labelled so you can see exactly which wrong mental models are present — and how widely they’re shared across the class.
A class-wide profile showing performance band distribution, the most prevalent misconception clusters, and where the sharpest gaps sit. Designed so you can brief your Head of Department in two minutes.
Plain-language explanations of each misconception trap your students fell into — what the trap is, why it persists, and what correct understanding looks like. Useful for lesson planning and targeted reteaching.
The everyday phrases and teaching shortcuts that accidentally reinforce misconceptions. A short reference you can share with your department to tighten the language around tricky concepts.
Remediation exercises matched to the misconceptions your class actually holds — not generic revision sheets, but trap-first practice designed to surface and correct the specific errors identified in the diagnostic.
Our assessments map the specific misconceptions each student holds, sorted into diagnostic clusters with clear intervention pathways your department can act on immediately.
Students complete an online diagnostic via a shared link — no accounts, no installs, no IT overhead. You receive a class-level misconception heatmap showing exactly where understanding breaks down.
Every diagnostic question is grounded in published physics education research (FCI/TUG-K, Arons, Knight, Trowbridge & McDermott). This is structured conceptual assessment informed by decades of cognitive science.
Designed to work across IB DP, AP, A-Level, and GCSE physics. The misconceptions are universal — the diagnostic framework works everywhere.
We're offering free pilots to international schools. Choose from our Motion Misconception Diagnostic (25 questions, ~25 minutes) or our Newton's Laws Misconception Diagnostic (6 modules, 14 questions each, ~15 minutes per module). You receive a class-level misconception heatmap within 48 hours of completion, plus a cohort summary and remediation guidance.
FundaFirst HS exists because of a simple observation: students don't fail physics because they're not smart enough. They fail because they carry invisible misconceptions that no one ever surfaces — and these misconceptions persist right through exams, university, and beyond.
We're a team with years of deep, research-backed experience in education — particularly in physics, where the gap between procedural competence and conceptual understanding is widest and most damaging.
Rather than creating another resource that repeats what textbooks already say, we went back to the published research. Our pedagogy draws on research instruments like the FCI and TUG-K, along with Arnold Arons' work on operational definitions, Randall Knight's research-based teaching strategies, Trowbridge & McDermott's foundational work on position-velocity confusion, the fundamental principles approach of Chabay and Sherwood, and Lewis Carroll Epstein's Thinking Physics.
The result is a "trap-first" methodology — one that identifies exactly where students go wrong, uses cognitive conflict to destabilize the misconception, and then rebuilds understanding from first principles. We're building diagnostic tools for this across IB, AP, A-Level, and GCSE Physics — starting with motion & kinematics and Newton's laws.
You can't fix what you can't see. Every diagnostic maps the specific misconceptions a student holds — not just a score, but a roadmap for targeted intervention.
Every trap we document, every diagnostic question we write, every intervention we design is grounded in published physics education research.
Formulas are tools, not understanding. We build the intuition that makes formulas meaningful — so students know why they work, not just how to plug in numbers.
Our diagnostics are built for physics teachers. The heatmap, cohort summary, and remediation guidance are designed to inform teaching decisions — not just produce data.