Running Around

January is my busiest time of the year. Not only is school energetically back in session after the Holiday break, but coaching wrestling picks up steam as well. Planning for both my eighth grade and high school classes has been a time consuming and stressful process. I did manage to once again get my eighth graders running this year both in real-life and virtually.

Field trips are excellent ways to provide engagement and real learning for students. I consider any lesson that involves leaving the confines of M308 a field trip (going to the computer lab a notable exception). For students, suddenly class doesn't feel like class anymore. For my speed lesson I usually take students outside to work in groups to measure distance and time, and then calculate speed. Since it was about 10 F out the day I wanted to do this activity I had to go with Plan B.

Plan B involved taking the class into the "basement" which includes the hallways outside the locker rooms and wrestling room. Each group brought a meter stick, clipboard with data sheet, stopwatch, and dry-erase marker with rag. I tested the dry-erase marker on the floor of my room and it erased off well enough.

I tried to not give too many instructions. I wanted to see how much they could figure out without being encumbered by wordy directions. The suggestion was to measure about 5 to 10 m and then time how long it took for someone to run that distance. They had to get an average of 4 speeds that could have been 4 different group members or all of the same group member 4 times. Whatever combination worked.

The only thing that didn't work out well was that some students decided to write distances in HUGE numbers on the floor and/or write START and STOP in big letters. These did not erase off the floor even with much persistence. Live and learn. Being in the basement otherwise went well.  Being in the basement was less distracting than being outside where other classes might see us. Being next to the rowdy gym classes; we could be as rowdy as we wanted as well.

The next two days I brought my classes to a computer lab that has MinecraftEdu installed. Our goal is the compare our real speeds to that of our virtual selves in Minecraft. I have a world that I adapted for figuring out the speed of Steve (your character in Minecraft), a minecart, and a falling chicken and cow. We talk a bit about how programmers need to know science to program in the motion of objects in the game.

I generally have mixed results with this lesson which I have tweaked several times. Minecrafting students love this lesson and ask at the beginning of the year when we will be playing Minecraft in class. Some students don't read the signs in game and require help to move on. Overall, I do have fewer off-task students and students are excited to work in Minecraft.




I pondered having students make their own tracks to measure speed within assigned group plots in game. That way we could match the task we did in real-life better and afford more student creativity. I will seriously consider that option for next year.