Speed, Distance, and Time
with Paper Airplanes
Excel Project
Lee Ann DeHaas
Target audience
• 8th Grade
• Physics
• 27 Students
• General Education Class and Inclusion Class
• Two or three 50-minute class periods
Goals, Objectives & Outcomes
• Students will be able to
• Measure the distance an object has moved
• Identify the velocity of the object
• Calculate the speed of the object after determining the distance
and time of motion
Lesson Outline
• Problem of the Day: Which is travelling
faster, a plane flying 675 mph or a train
running 500 mph? How do you know?
• Lesson: SMART Board notes on solving for
S=D/T
• Activity: Have each student create a different
type of paper airplane. Groups of 4 students
each will test each plane by recording the
time and the distance that they fly. Students
must record all data in the excel file, solve for
speed, and interpret their findings in a lab
analysis.
Evaluation & Assessment
• Q&A Discussion (informal)
• Completed excel spreadsheet (formal)
• Completed Lab Analysis (formal)
Sense & Meaning
• Sense
• Students activate prior knowledge of speed and building paper
airplanes
• Meaning
• Gain meaning through activity and lab analysis
Primacy-Recency Effect
• Launch
• Problem of the Day: Which is travelling faster, a plane flying 675 mph or a train
running 500 mph? How do you know?
• Primacy (Prime time 1)
• Solving for Speed notes
• Down time
• Creating paper airplanes
• Recency (Prime time 2)
• Flying paper airplanes
Learning styles
Concrete Sequential
Concrete Random
Abstract Sequential Abstract Random
Citations
• New Jersey. Department of Education. New Jersey Core
Curriculum Content Standards. Web. 10 Oct. 1213.
• Sousa, David A. How the Brain Learns. 3rd. Thousand
Oaks: Corwin Press, 2006.
•
MSETRamapo.org. Ramapo College. Web