Week 2: Races

 

1.  

    This week in lab, we discussed the question, "How do we make a race exciting between people who run at different speeds?". To answer this question, we broke into groups to try and figure out how much of a head start one runner would need to make a race exciting. My group did a series of trials, testing how much time it took for a few of our runners to travel 12 meters. That allowed us to find their speed in meters per second, giving us a good idea of how fast they could run if given a random distance to race. 

    After doing our work in small groups, we all came together and had a race against another group. Because the distance was randomly assigned, it was a bit difficult to accurately decipher what a fair and exciting race would entail. That being said, it was fun to collaborate with other groups who may have done their experiments differently than we did!

2. 

In the lecture this week I learned more about how children can and should describe motion through investigation. They can do this by recognizing patterns and putting those patterns in motion into a graph.

3. 

In this week's reading, I learned more about how to guide students from an initial phenomenon to asking questions about their learning. The framework explored in the article follows a storyline to keep students engaged and give them autonomy in their investigation. Within the article, some of the most helpful aspects were the figures, giving physical examples of what the teacher's and student's work could look like. I wish there was more information on how to differentiate this lesson for students with disabilities or students who are speakers of other languages. How does this instructional strategy change with different students in mind?