The Lab · Motion Foundations

What to do about the misconceptions once you have found them

Three browser-based classroom activities for Motion Foundations, free for teachers. Each is a single file that opens on your projector and keeps working with the network off, and each comes with a printable student worksheet and teacher notes written so anyone can run the lesson cold in 40 minutes.

Each activity is one file. It opens in any browser, works offline once loaded, installs nothing, and collects nothing — no student accounts, no emails, no telemetry. With it come a two-page student worksheet and one page of teacher notes written to be run cold in 40 minutes: a physical phase on floor tape, projected scenes with commit-before-reveal, and layered worksheet extensions for Grades 11–12.
The Activities

Three activities for Motion Foundations

Each activity is a 40-minute lesson with its own worksheet and teacher notes. Activities 1 and 2 can be run in either order or on their own — each is triggered by its own misconception bands. Activity 3 is the capstone and follows them.
01

The Graph That Looks Like a Hill

Position, displacement & distance · x–t graph meaning · position–speed discrimination

The class walks, records its own event table, and then confronts the graph that looks like a hill — committing in ink before every reveal. Includes the match-the-graph corridor, the graph nobody can match, the two-cars freeze-frame, and a Builder for constructing motions from claims.

Open the activity Download activity (HTML) Student worksheet (PDF) Teacher notes (PDF)
40 minutes · floor tape 0–8 m, a steady clap, one worksheet per student.
02

The Negative That Doesn’t Mean Less

Average velocity & “per” · instantaneous velocity as a limit · speed, velocity & sign

A steady velocity is a kept promise about the next second — sign and all. The rate machine keeps it hop by hop; two walkers meet and the more negative velocity turns out to be the faster walker; shrinking intervals close in on an instant from both sides; one journey yields two different averages.

Open the activity Download activity (HTML) Student worksheet (PDF) Teacher notes (PDF)
40 minutes · same tape, a metronome or clap tempo.
03

Three Languages, One Walk

The translation capstone — words ↔ graph ↔ walk, across all eight diagnostic bands

Students who can compute often still cannot translate. Stories become graphs and the walk judges; a graph becomes four rival stories; a driven walk is dictated into words and a sketch; impossible stories are rejected for the two rules they break; and the Builder reads a model back as words.

Open the activity Download activity (HTML) Student worksheet (PDF) Teacher notes (PDF)
40 minutes · run after Activities 1–2, or as consolidation before the diagnostic.

How to run these

Download the three files for an activity, print the worksheet, open the HTML on your projection machine (it keeps working with the network off), and run the teacher notes top to bottom — every prediction goes down in ink before any reveal. Students can run the same file on their own devices afterwards; it is the identical activity. Questions, or a class heatmap to pair these with: admin@fundafirsths.com.

Pair them with the diagnostic

These activities are the remediation half of the toolkit: the diagnostic finds the misconception, the activity confronts it in class. They target the same misconception bands the Motion Diagnostic reports on.

See the Motion Diagnostic →