How fast can you run 100 metres?

Hey there, welcome to our very first Picnic Planning session. If you're a homeschool educator or a classroom teacher, this could be exactly what you're looking for. A way to bring back real life learning, make it super engaging, and actually enjoy the process of teaching and learning with your kids. Together, we're going to plan out the ultimate rich learning task for teachers who are trying to cater for a huge range of abilities in their classroom or homeschoolers that are trying to juggle multiple ages at once. The challenge today, it's a very simple one.

How fast can you run 100 metres? My name's Ryan. I'm a numeracy learning specialist who's been in the classroom as a teacher for the past 15 years. I'm also the co-founder of theINmag, the platform giving creative kids a chance to be seen and heard. Today's challenge has been sent in by eight-year-old Auri from the Shoalhaven in New South Wales.

If you haven't done it already, I'd highly recommend jumping onto our website. We've got a page called freebies and from there you can download our in-task planner. If you don't have access to a printer, don't worry, totally fine. You can choose a plain piece of A4 paper for this session. So our team's purposely developed this in-task planner.

It's broken into three key sections. The things that you do before the task, during the task, and afterwards. But we'll get into that soon. The reason we've titled these in-task planners is because evidence shows kids learn best when they're actively engaged. We don't just want our kids to be on task, we want them to be in task.

We've all had that feeling, you know, when you're loving something you're doing, you look at your watch and suddenly an hour's gone by, where's that time gone? That's when you're in task and that's when the best learning happens. Right. Let's get into this lesson and make it all about the kids. So the first section we're going to tackle today is called the launch.

And we know this is actually called how fast, ignore my handwriting, can you run 100 metres? But the launch is so much more than that. The whole point of the launch is to really grab the attention of your kids and really pick their interests and they're engaged in it from the get-go. A lot of people do this with storytelling. So in the past, I've used like shown footage of Usain Bolt winning a hundred-metre race, but maybe that's not what you know would grab your kids' attention.

Perhaps you've got an old photo of you winning at sport, like when you were a kid or maybe it's when you're an adult. Maybe you could tell them a little bit of a white lie, but it'll engage them that you ran your fastest ever 100-metre time when you were their age. So you're wondering what sort of time they would get. All right, guys, that's good. Yeah, just a bit of work.

So every now and again, throughout this video, this pause icon will come up. And it's really just a prompt for you to hit pause and think about the best approach for your kids. So if there's any point in this video that you feel like, hey, I need a little bit more thinking to link it to my kids. Just hit the pause button yourself. Totally fine.

So this is honestly one of the most vital parts of planning an open or rich learning task. And it's something that actually gets forgotten quite a bit because you come up with a great task and you think, great, I've got it sorted. No problemo. But then you begin the task and it's really easy to sort of lose yourself or forget the direction you want to go. So right now we're going to anticipate where we think our kids will take this task so that we know before we even begin the lesson where we can go and potentially come up with some questions that can help guide the situation.

One thing I'd recommend while you're doing this across the world, wherever you are, you've got curriculum need to meet. So I'd highly recommend pulling out your curriculum either while you're doing this or when you're finished so that you can just make sure, hey, am I setting the bar high enough for my kids? Okay, so let's get stuck in this question here. It looks like a really simple question on the surface. But when the kids get into it, I'll actually break it into three key areas.

I'll probably ask, well, how can I measure 100 metres? How can I time it? And then the next part, which actually gets forgotten a little bit, is how can I record my results? So we're actually going to break it into those three areas. So first up, we had measuring, timing and recording.

Now, totally up to you how your anticipate section looks here. I like to use a lot of words, sometimes visuals. And I know a lot of people like to just do drawings. Some people I know even use like the curriculum hyperlinks, but I just get lost with that. So for me, I like to just write it out.

So let's start here with measuring. The first thing you're going to think, well, what is my kid going to do when we first begin it? You might have some littlies that do the steps. So they might begin stepping out. So they're thinking, well, how many steps will it take to get to 100 metres?

Again, not a bad step. You might get some kids that have access to one-metre rulers. So they're actually grabbing the one-metre ruler and they're using it end on end. Not a bad strategy. You might have some kids that access the eight-metre tape measure, rummage through mum or dad's drawer and find one.

But the big question is, is that the most efficient, most effective way? And number one, is it the most accurate? So when you come down to probing questions, I'm actually going to do this at the same time while we while we do this. Questions on a base level can be put into probing questions or prompting questions. Prompting questions would be so for this one.

Hey, could you measure this with a one-metre ruler? Yes. Not much thought going on there. And you've actually given away the answer. So we want to flip that.

And we basically want to ask questions like, hey, how could this be more accurate? You could say, well, how can I make sure that I'm actually measuring this properly? Hopefully that'll prompt your kids to go, well, what's a better way to do it? Maybe they're having collaborative conversations and they're getting to a point where they're like, eight-metre tape measure would help it. Hey, maybe we've got a trundle wheel.

I'm just going to add that. I'm just going to draw it. A little trundle wheel. Okay. There might even be some kids and this is, to be honest, I think high-level maths thinking because it's super efficient that go, hey, we've got an aths track just around the corner.

Do you reckon we can just go there? Great way to solve the problem. They know it's 100-metre track. Why? Because professionals measure it.

And it's probably a really good problem-solving strategy. So give that kid a tick. Maybe a bonus mark. Okay, up next we've got our timing element. This is actually really important because depending on the age of your kids, the ability of your kids, they might be counting in second.

You might have some littlies that are doing that. You might have some oldies, so some middle kids that are potentially using stopwatches into the hundredths of a second. And then you've got your oldies that might be thinking, well, how can I be super accurate with what I'm measuring here in terms of time? So they might be looking at the thousandths of a second. Then the other flip side of that is you'll be once again thinking about, well, how can we accurately do it?

So you might have some kids waiting at the end. They might be in charge of stopwatches. The other kids might be signalling when to go. I'm assuming no one's got access to a starter pistol. That's fine.

But then the question is, well, kids, how can we be really accurate with our timing? So you don't want to leave that conversation. You want the kids to lead it so that hopefully they're taking ownership over that. Now, something that I always like to leave room for. I'm going to call it the mixups.

Yeah, that's your misconceptions. Maybe misunderstandings that kids can have. And you need to think about your kids in particular. Well, what do you think they might have when they enter this task or when they're attempting this task? A big one I always see in this is kids mixing up how they read decimal numbers.

Especially using stopwatches. You know, you see those kids that might see the number 13.146 and they'll read that as thirteen point one hundred and forty-six. Little misconception, but it can have a huge impact on their place value moving forward. So, hey, if you think your kids might have any other misconceptions, put them in your mixup area because it's something you can identify and potentially ask the right question and steer them clear of that in the future. So definitely do that.

Okay, so the kids have run the race. They've got their results. Now what? It's the big part. It's actually the recording.

This is something that gets forgotten. Doesn't matter if you're teaching at homeschool or school. A lot of the time, if you've been outside, you've done this big activity. What goes missing, the actual documentation of what it is, because why? Well, you come in, it's hot, sweaty.

Maybe it went a bit longer than you expected. It is so vital, so important that kids are actually recording. Or else it's just a mess of numbers. You need to be able to visually represent what you're doing. And the beauty of this is depending on your kids, they might all be doing this in different ways.

So if you've got, I'm thinking of homeschoolers or a class with great diversity in there, you might pose the question, hey, how can we record our results? You might expect your littlies to potentially be doing number lines and marking their results on number lines. Maybe you're actually expecting your littlies to order them from the smallest to the largest in terms of how fast they've run. Perhaps your middles are drawing graphs showing their different times. They could be plotting them on like a number line as well, but maybe into the hundreds.

They could also be figuring out, hey, for all the runs that I did, what's the mean, median and mode? Your expectation for your oldies might be to record their numbers in the thousands. Maybe they're thinking about, well, what are the variables that impacted each of my runs? Why are my runs different? They could even be comparing themselves to high-level athletes.

Maybe it's a graph that shows the difference. Or maybe even for a little bit of fun, those oldies, they're actually looking at their pace. So they're finding what's my pace and comparing it to different animals from around the world. Wouldn't that be a fun activity? Now, if you look at my planner right now, it looks really messy.

To be honest, it doesn't matter because the only person that needs to understand it to interpret it is you. So as long as I understand what's going on here, it's totally fine. So one thing that I will mention, though, is if you come over to where I've got recording, I've actually got this written as a trajectory of learning. So it goes from my expectations for my little kids to my middle kids to my high kids. And I need to think now, well, what are the probing questions that I can ask if my expectation is for a kid to be in this area or they're not getting there?

Well, what's a question I can ask that might prompt them, sorry, probe them to get into that area? So I might start with the questions here first. So we know measuring and timing, they're actually both of our measurements. So the key aspect for measuring is accuracy. So the question I might ask is, how can you be more accurate or can I use anything different?

So a lot of the time my question would be, well, can you show me this in a different way? And that might be the little thing, little tipping point to get your kid to go from this to, hey, maybe I can experiment in the thousands. Another question that's really quite a simple one, but it gets kids thinking is, can you go any deeper with this? A question like that can really awaken the inner critic in a kid and can encourage them to go that little bit further. Maybe they'll be a bit nervous to ask themselves that.

Hey, I'd highly recommend right now just hitting the pause button and making sure that you feel like I've actually catered for the kids in my room or my kids in my family, if I'm a homeschooler. Go through it and just say, do you think this is actually where my kids will go? Because if not, totally fine. Write what you think will actually be impactful for your kids. Okay, congratulations, you've finished everything you need to do before you begin the lesson.

The next section is where you can take notes during the lesson of the things you're seeing kids doing. At our homeschool, I've seen them divided up into three, for example, and they'll actually write the kid's name. They'll just write a sentence of what they see the kids performing. It means they've actually got evidence when the department comes by and says, hey, can you prove what your kid's been learning? You can say, hey, I've seen this, I've checked it off with the curriculum.

This is actually what I've seen the progression of learning from my kids. I mean, you're accountable and it means you've actually got a paper trail too, which is great. In terms of teachers, I'd highly recommend not thinking about taking notes for all of your class. It is like, it just doesn't work. What you can do though is take some notes on a few kids and you'll actually see things happening in your classroom as well.

There's plenty of space. You can flip it over and jot down some other notes. So just for the sake of this, I'm leaving that section blank because it's totally up to you guys. What do you want to document there? So this last section is actually my favourite part.

It's the Where to next. And this is where you can pull up your planner and you can say, hey, look, my kid's doing really well or maybe they struggled in some area. So I really want to focus on this, this, or this and bring it through my Where to next. So you're actually creating like a sequence of lessons individually planned for your kids. And that is super powerful.

Now, just be aware, if there's areas in here that your kids didn't get, that is totally fine. Like it's actually expected that kids don't cover all the areas you've planned and you've factored in everything above and beyond. But it does mean that, hey, you've done all this planning already. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. When you create a lesson for the next day, you can actually just pull out this element and you know, hey, I've already got my questions.

I've already got my sequence of learning, my trajectory of learning that I can use tomorrow. How cool is that? So just a couple of ideas that might get the ball rolling for you. You might've noticed that, hey, my kid actually really found it difficult to accurately measure distance. So instead of doing this lesson again, doing the same thing, just think about what's another thing they can measure.

So a cool one might be, hey, let's go out and do some long jump. They're measuring each of their jumps. What a great lesson. A better way to do that, I think. Go down to the bush, go for a walk, maybe through the woods or whatever, come across a creek.

And you say, hey, I wonder what's the furthest or the widest creek that you could jump over. You've been for a walk, that's your launch, your storytelling is done. And those kids, I'll tell you, they'll jump and jump and jump. They'll do different jumping styles and they're measuring the whole time. Really fun lesson.

Maybe your kids found it quite challenging to find the mean, median and mode. And you're thinking, oh geez, I'd love to come up with a lesson to do with that. Get creative. If they've got a sports team that they love, maybe they could actually go through their scores from last year, come up with a mean, median mode. Maybe they're rolling a dice 100 times and they're recording the results.

That's an easy way for you to tie in the 3Ms. 3Ms? Yeah, let's roll with it. Honestly, this is my favourite part of the whole planning process because you're purposefully going back and you're finding gaps. You're finding areas that you know your kids need a little bit more attention in and you know that you're moving forward with that area. So you're technically, you're filling the gaps for the kids from things you've seen in real life, open, rich activities.

Love it. Righto, guys. So there's nothing left to do but for you guys to go launch this lesson, see how it goes. I'd actually love to hear what you thought of this as a session because there's a dog in the park. This is brand new for us trying to do this style and it obviously takes a lot of time and effort to film, to edit, to create these.

So let me know. Hey, dog. If you found this valuable and yeah, we'll keep going with this series. Remember to leave any questions you've got in the comments because we'll be sure to answer them. All right.

Good luck, guys. Happy learning.

No. A plain sheet of A4 does the job. If you can print, grab the free IN task planner from the button above.

Yes. The whole idea is one collaborative, engaging task that all your kids can work through, whatever their ability. Your expectations change with their age and ability, and your local area. Littlies might step it out and count seconds. Oldies chase thousandths of a second and compare their pace to animals. Same question, different depth.