Traffic

My excitement knows no bounds, though to be fair I am seeing a doctor about it. This is a screengrab from the rather wonderful "Traffic" program, which forms part of the package The Language of Functions and Graphs. You'll find this in a variety of places - it's in the DfE's Standards Unit, for one thing - but it's taken me ages to find the actual program as opposed to the worksheets. Steps forward and take a bow, then, the wonderful people at the STEM resource library hingmy.

I remember this from back in the day, when it was part of the award-winning package called (seriously) The Shell Red Box, by Malcolm Swan. I used the wee computer program with a BBC micro - man, we were cutting edge at Beeslack High School in the 80's, I tell you - but it's good to see the graphics have been spruced up a bit.

My advice to you is just to get in and play, but be warned as you'll have to set up an account with the STEM folk first. Fear not, it's free. I used the first few examples in the program with my S3 class as we continued our journey (see what I did there) with Distance/Speed/Time, and you'll struggle to find a better introduction to Distance/Time graphs. You can play the situation through without the snapshots and graph and invite pupils to work together and agree their version of the graph. Show-me-boards ahoy!