The Lab · Motion Foundations
What to do about the misconceptions once you have found them
Three classroom activities for Motion Foundations that run in a browser, free for teachers. Each is a single file that opens on your projector and keeps working with the network off. Each comes with a printable student worksheet and teacher notes, written for someone running the lesson for the first time. Each lesson takes 40 minutes.
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, since each targets its own misconception bands. Activity 3 brings them together and comes last.
01
The Graph That Looks Like a Hill
Position, displacement and distance · what an x–t graph means · position against speed
The class walks, records its own event table, and then meets the graph that looks like a hill. Students commit 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 making motions from claims.
Open the activityDownload 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 and “per” · instantaneous velocity as a limit · speed, velocity and sign
A steady velocity is a promise about the next second, sign included. 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 walk gives two different averages.
Open the activityDownload activity (HTML) · Student worksheet (PDF) · Teacher notes (PDF)
40 minutes · same tape, a metronome or clap tempo.
03
Three Languages, One Walk
Translation between words, graph and walk, across all eight diagnostic bands
Students who can compute often still cannot translate. Stories become graphs, and the walk judges them. 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. The Builder reads a model back as words.
Open the activityDownload activity (HTML) · Student worksheet (PDF) · Teacher notes (PDF)
40 minutes · run after Activities 1 and 2, or as revision before the diagnostic.
How to run these
Download the three files for an activity and print the worksheet. Open the HTML file on your projection machine. It keeps working with the network off. Run the teacher notes from top to bottom. Every prediction goes down in ink before any reveal. Students can run the same file on their own devices afterwards. For questions, or for a class heatmap to pair these with, email admin@
Pair them with the diagnostic
These activities are the remediation half of the toolkit. The diagnostic finds the misconception, and the activity confronts it in class. They target the same misconception bands that the Motion Diagnostic reports on.