Preview · the opening missionRead this to the class:
A toy company's box says its cars are "super fast." A Grade 8 student says, "It's a toy. A real cat could catch it." Nobody has numbers. Your team's job: measure exactly how fast the toy car goes, and prove it with a graph.
Teams of three, with rotating jobs: Launcher (releases the car), Timer (runs the stopwatch), Recorder (writes data and calculates).
Look inside the PDF
Sample pages, stamped “preview”. The download is the clean, full lesson.
In the full lesson PDF
- Predict (5–10 min)
- Hunt (20 min)
- Reveal (10–15 min)
- Act (10 min)
- Background for the teacher
- Assessment
- Student sheet
On the student sheet
- My prediction
- Our results
- Our distance-time graph
- CER: how fast is the toy car?
- Exit ticket
US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white. The student sheet is on its own page, ready to photocopy.
Free with an account (any 3 lessons), or US$19 / C$25 for all 4 lessons in this unit.
What students show by the end
- Measures and calculates
- Graphs motion
- Argues with CER
From the lesson’s rubric, which scores each one as not yet, getting there or got it.
Questions teachers ask
How long does “How fast is a toy car really going?” take?
50–60 min. Group size: teams of 3.
How much prep does it need?
15 minutes: find a long, smooth stretch of floor, such as a hallway. For each team, set up a ramp about 1 m (3 ft) long and put masking-tape marks on the floor at 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 cm (about 0, 20, 40, 60 and 80 in) from the bottom of the ramp. Check every phone or stopwatch works.
What materials do I need?
Toy car that rolls straight (test it first); board or stiff cardboard, about 1 m (3 ft) long, for a ramp; books to prop the ramp; stopwatch or phone timer; measuring tape or metre stick; masking tape; and 1 more. Cost: about $15 for a class of 30, if you have the toy cars and ramps from Lesson 1.
Which curriculum standards does it cover?
NGSS (US): MS-PS3-1 (partly).
What’s in the lesson PDF?
A teacher guide that walks you through predict, hunt, reveal, act, background for the teacher and assessment, then a student sheet (“My prediction”, “Our results”, “Our distance-time graph”, “CER: how fast is the toy car?” and “Exit ticket”) on its own page, ready to photocopy. It’s US Letter and prints cleanly in black and white.
Can I try it for free?
Yes. A free account includes any 3 full lessons of your choice, and this can be one of them. After that, this unit is US$19 (C$25) for all 4 lessons, yours to keep, or every lesson is US$79 (C$109) a year.