Speed and Velocity Lab Jag Style

I found this speed and velocity lab on the internet from the Dade County physical science manual. The manual had a catchy name H.O.T. (higher order thinking). I was all in.

I challenged my students to do the lab. First we organized into groups. This has become a big hit in my class. I put the day's categories on Canvas, our online platform, for lessons and have them read them. They then try to organized themselves quicker than my other five classes. For the speed and velocity lab they had to have one person wearing black, one wearing red, one with sandals and one with none of those three. The winning class organized in thirty-five seconds.

Essentially the students were to decide on a walk to move from one measured point to another. Each person in the group was to move a different way (my adaptation). The creativity was impressive. Some walked upstairs forward, others backward. Some skipped, others hopped. Some crawled, another rolled. One walked on her hands.

One girl even did floor swimming. Another did somersaults.

Another backflips.

The most creative perhaps was the frog walk.

In short, they were to try to move at the same speed for two trials across their measured distance in order to "measure" an unknown distance. They did this by walking at that constant speed and recording the time. Multiplying their speed by their time gave them the unknown distance. One young man was only 10 centimeters off from the 12 meter distance!


It was good to see them involved and making charts and recording data and collaborating about what to do with it.

Out of 34 groups one group got completely out of the box - they decided to do a virtual motion across the globe using four different motions - jet traveling, kayaking, seqwaying and hiking.  

My thanks to Dade County for giving me this idea for a lab. Thanks to my students for being all in.

Alka Rockets Pop!

Destiny and Emma's Rocket went 490 cm!

Day One Rocked

After the usual three days of professional torture, my students came for classes on Thursday and Friday. I was ready and they were ready. Sometimes you get it right as a teacher, and this was one of those times.

One of the sessions of professional torture that was not so bad was when the faculty in groups of about 10 stacked shoes in the Commons. I used that idea in class. Each student was given an index card with a color dot on it as they entered. After Ready, Set, Go and Roll Call, I told them to organize in colors and stand together with their cards raised. It was a contest to see which class could organize themselves the faster. The winning time was sixteen seconds! Here are some of the results:

The first thing they did was write their Ready, Set, Go – some people call it do now or bell ringer. I like to say what it is intended to do – get them ready to go into the day’s learning. The prompt was what is science in general? and what is physical science in particular? After ten minutes I did the roll call. In keeping with common core and oral and written communication, I have each student make their first mini-speech – say their name and read their best sentence. I asked the students with really good sentences to write them on an index card with their name. Then I had a student staple, “publish” them on the class bulletin board.

Finally we had our first lab. I passed out this mysterious powder and had students guess what it was. Most said it was flour or baking soda. About ten per cent guessed right and said it was cornstarch. We went outside and mixed it with water to form a non-Newtonian fluid called oobleck. When you hold it in your hand it oozes. When you squeeze it, it becomes a solid. Release, ooze, and squeeze, hard. It can be tossed like a ball. All had great fun. When they returned to the classroom they wrote about the properties of oobleck.

So there was the first day. Students wrote and spoke informally and formally and some were even published. Students had a kinesthetic get-to-know-each-other activity with stacking shoes – a pretty intimate encounter with bare feet and stinky shoes. Students got to investigate their first inquiry – what is it lab (I did not tell them what it was or how it would behave when mixed).  Then they got to explain the results.

It is going to be an interesting year.