Do your state standards cover speed vs time graphs? Some do, and actually, some don’t. Many cover distance-time graphs. Whether you need to cover them or not, learning about how to read any graph is important in middle school!
One of the most common struggles that I hear from other middle school teachers is how much of a challenge it is for their students to understand graphs.
It’s such an important concept! Many types of information are given to us in graph form in the “real-world”!
So, saying all that, I want to share how you can bring the WOW Factor to your science classroom when teaching your students about speed and time graphs.
Speed-Time Graphs Introduction Activities
Before diving into the content, you should get your students excited to learn about speed-time graphs and help them to WONDER. Here are two WONDER strategies to try out to hopefully get them internally motivated to learn more!
Speed Time Graphs Mystery Story
Before your students learn anything, show them a mystery graph and see if they can work in partners or groups to come up with a story that might match it. You can either draw one on the board or do a Google image search!
For example, you could share the image below. Ask students, what would be a story that this graph would represent?
If students need a bit of modeling or scaffolding before they answer, give them an example. Such as “Chandler hopped on her skateboard. She pushed off and cruised at a constant speed of 2 m/s. She decided to start slowing down and decelerated until she came to a complete stop.”
Of course, this activity could be done after learning about the topic, but if they truly have no clue what they are doing, this activity may get them WONDERing and curious to learn more!
Speed-Time Graph Matching
Create cards of speed-time graphs only showing one thing. What do I mean? One card can show a speed vs time graph that shows increasing acceleration, one with a constant acceleration, one with a constant speed, etc.
Then, create the matching cards!
See what students can match up!
Speed vs Time Graphs Interactive Lesson
Interactive lessons are great for both teaching and review. They use the 7 steps to help students retain information. These use a segmenting strategy to help students learn pieces of information at a time before moving on. There are embedded questions that help students process information.
In this speed vs time graphs lesson, students learn all about how to read an interpret these graphs.
They learn about speed, time, a speed-time graph definition, what a speed vs time graph look like when constant, accelerating, motionless, and more.
The interactive activities inside of the lesson include drag-and-drop activities, completing speed-time graphs, exploring outside resources, and more!
Speed and Time Graphs WIDEN Activities
Now that your students have had a chance to become internally motivated about this topic and dived deeper into the content, now, it’s time WIDEN and extend their knowledge! Here are some activities that your students can do to help them to apply what they have learned and gain more knowledge about speed and time graphs.
The Perfect Trip Story
This activity is a great way to help students show off what they’ve learned with a creative twist.
Have students create a story of “the perfect trip”. There is a catch though. They have to make sure that it’s a trip where they can graph speed vs time.
This trip can be anything they want. Are they going on a car trip to somewhere fun? Are they going on a space mission? Are they taking a magic carpet ride? Are they going on a wildlife safari?
It can be anything they want!
After they write their story, the must visually represent it in a speed vs time graph!
After, they can switch their stories with a partner to see if their stories and graphs match.
Compare to Distance-Time Graphs
Speed-time graphs and distance-time graphs can look similar, but they are different because they are graphing different things.
For example, a horizontal line on a speed-time graph can mean constant speed, whereas on a distance-time graph, it can mean motionless. So, if you haven’t covered distance-time graphs, you should do that! Then, have a conversation with your students about the similarities and differences between the two.
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