I'm on block scheduling, and, as a consequence, I have a new group of students this week. They seem to be good kids, and I'm working on organizing my equipment and materials so they can have lots of lovely, lovely labs.
The first lab will involve motion. It's the central concept of Physical Science. I have several PASCO motion detectors, and will start by hooking one up to the computer. This year, I feel so blessed. The school district bought computer projectors for every science teacher. No more borrowing from the <s>library</s> media center, and hoping that one will be available.
With the projector, I can do an activity called Motion Matching. To see the activity described and demonstrated, go to this site. It shows the activity with the PASCO GLX, but the setup is similar.
The cool thing is that I can tag this as a kinesthetic lesson. Also, it's probably the best activity I've ever run across to help students understand the connection between direction and the slope of a motion graph. I'll make sure that I take plenty of pictures of the activity next week, and upload them here.