Great Resource for Middle School Too!

This book chapter offers an affordable way to teach students using inquiry methods the concept of average speed. The book chapter information lists this at a high school grade level, but thi... See More

This book chapter offers an affordable way to teach students using inquiry methods the concept of average speed. The book chapter information lists this at a high school grade level, but this activity would be great with my middle school students. Using coffee filters, students time the rate the coffee filters fall from five different heights. Students are required to record their data and graph. There is even an example on how the graph should look when completed, in regard to spacing and size. The instructions are clear and easy to understand. One drawback, if you don’t purchase the entire book, the activity references a previous activity. So if you don’t purchase the book and have your students complete the activities in order, some of the lab questions will be unanswerable. I plan on purchasing the book to avoid this problem.

Basic graphing exercise

This chapter provides a very basic introduction to average velocity, but does not take the next step and actually calculate the average velocity at a point. Also, could extend to the next le... See More

This chapter provides a very basic introduction to average velocity, but does not take the next step and actually calculate the average velocity at a point. Also, could extend to the next level and the concepts of acceleration and deceleration. Perhaps effective for middle school, but I would expect more depth for high school.