Calculating Average Speed Lesson Plan (TEKS 7.7A): A Complete 5E Lesson for Distance, Time, and Speed

Inside the Calculating Average Speed 5E Lesson

The 5E instructional model walks students through five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It flips the traditional lecture-first sequence on its head. Students explore a concept hands-on before you ever explain it, which means by the time you do explain it, they have something to hook the vocabulary onto.

I switched to the 5E model years ago and stopped going back. Kids retain more, ask better questions, and stop staring at me waiting to be told the answer. The Calculating Average Speed 5E Lesson is built on this framework from start to finish. Here's how it plays out across the five phases.

🎯 Engage

Day one is a teacher-led walking lab in the hallway or gym. You tape off a measured stretch (10 meters works great), hand out stopwatches, and let kids walk, jog, and sprint while their partner times them. Each pair fills out a student sheet with the distance and the time, then works through a guided set of questions to figure out their speed for each pace.

By the end of the period, kids have their own calculations on their student sheet, written in their own hand, and they can talk through what those numbers actually mean. Nobody has heard a vocabulary lecture yet. That's the point. They're walking into the rest of the unit already understanding that speed is distance divided by time, not because someone told them so but because they just did it.

What's included in the Engage:

• Teacher directions for the walking lab
• Printable student observation sheet
• Answer key for the discussion questions
• Four learning objective slides (standard verbatim, "Calculate and describe" verb highlighted, "I CAN...", and "WE WILL...")
• An illustrated Force and Motion Word Wall in English and Spanish covering the full unit vocabulary

🔬 Explore

The Calculating Average Speed Station Lab is the heart of the Explore phase. Students rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) over one class period. The Station Lab is split into four input stations (where kids take in new information) and four output stations (where they show what they learned).

The four input stations:

• 🎬 Watch It! — Students watch a short video on speed, distance, and time, then answer guided questions about how the formula works.
• 📖 Read It! — A one-page reading passage at two differentiated levels, with a Spanish version included.
• 🔬 Explore It! — Students use a ramp, a toy car, and a stopwatch to measure distance and time at three different ramp heights, then calculate the car's speed for each run.
• 💻 Research It! — Reference cards with the speed formula, common units (m/s, km/h, mph), and worked-out story problems.

The four output stations:

• 📋 Organize It! — A card sort where students match scenarios to the correct speed calculation.
• 🎨 Illustrate It! — Students draw a labeled diagram of an object in motion and annotate the distance and time pieces of the formula.
• ✍️ Write It! — Three open-ended story problems where students solve for speed and explain their reasoning in complete sentences.
• 📝 Assess It! — A short formative check with multiple choice and a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary paragraph.

Print and digital versions are both included. If you want the full breakdown of what happens at every single station, what students produce, and how to set it up, that's in our dedicated Station Lab post.

→ Read the full Calculating Average Speed Station Lab walkthrough 8 stations, materials list, teacher tips

The Station Lab is included in the full 5E lesson. You don't need to buy it separately if you're getting the whole unit.

📚 Explain

Here's the real payoff of doing the Engage and Explore before the Explain: by the time kids hit this phase, they've already measured a distance, used a stopwatch, and calculated a speed on their own. They have a working understanding before you ever show them the formula in a clean way. The discussions get deeper, the questions get sharper, and you spend less time defining and more time pushing their thinking.

The Calculating Average Speed Presentation walks 7th graders through the full scope of TEKS 7.7A, one concept at a time. The deck opens with the working definition: speed is the change in distance over a specific amount of time, written as speed = distance / time. From there it builds out the standard units (miles per hour, meters per second, kilometers per hour) and shows students how the unit comes from the two measurements they used to calculate it. If distance is in meters and time is in seconds, the answer is in meters per second. That feels obvious once you see it. The deck makes sure kids see it.

The middle of the deck moves into average speed, which is the big idea of the standard. Objects don't usually travel at one steady speed. A car stops at red lights, a runner slows down on a hill, a bird rests partway through a migration. Average speed is the entire distance traveled divided by the entire time it took. The deck walks students through it step by step: identify the distance, identify the time, add up all the distances, add up all the times, then divide. A migrating bird example sits right in the middle of the deck. The bird flies 209 miles in 5 hours on day one, then 127 miles in 3 hours on day two. Students total up the distances (336 miles), total up the times (8 hours), divide, and get 42 mph. The number means something because they walked it out.

Then the deck pushes harder. A 100-meter sprint analysis asks students to interpret a distance-versus-time graph and figure out whether the runner beat a target speed of 9.5 m/s. A multi-flight travel scenario asks them to calculate the average speed of three different flight options and recommend the fastest one for a friend afraid of flying. Each example is a different real-world situation, but the math is the same. Total distance over total time. Units matched up. The deck closes with a swim relay Last Look problem where four swimmers each cover 100 meters in different times, and students calculate the team's overall average speed.

What makes the Calculating Average Speed Presentation different from a typical physics slideshow is that kids are doing something on almost every slide. It's not a lecture deck. It's a participation deck. "Your answer:" prompts appear on most slides, Brain Breaks reset attention every few slides (including a partner steps-per-second activity built right into the deck), and Quick Action INB tasks (a speed-matching activity, a toy-car trial-run calculation) show up throughout. Think About It prompts push deeper into bigger ideas like the sprinter's personal record and the multi-leg flight plan. The deck closes with a Check for Understanding tied back to the Essential Questions: What measurements of distance and time must be recorded in an investigation for average speed? and How is average speed calculated using distance and time measurements?

The Explain materials in this product include:

• An editable 17-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (Dependent and Modified), works in PowerPoint or Google Slides
• A guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout that mirrors the Presentation, with answer key
• A Paper Interactive Notebook (English and Spanish) students cut, fold, and glue into their notebooks
• A Digital Interactive Notebook at both levels with answer keys, for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom

The Explain runs across two class periods. The built-in Think About It prompts are where the real discussion happens, so let those breathe.

🛠️ Elaborate

The Elaborate phase is where students stretch what they learned about calculating average speed and put it into a project of their choosing. In this 7th grade physics lesson, that's a Student Choice Project board with six different project options plus a "design your own" pathway.

Students might design a sports highlight reel that calculates the average speed of an athlete from real game footage, write a travel itinerary that lists the average speed of every leg of a road trip, build a model race track and calculate the average speed of three different toy cars, or record a video math tutorial that walks a younger student through a story problem. There are options for kids who love to write, kids who love to draw, kids who love to build, and kids who love to perform. Whatever the project, the point is the same: students apply distance, time, and the speed formula to a real-world artifact instead of a worksheet.

Choice is the whole point. By letting students pick how they show their thinking, you get more authentic work for TEKS 7.7A and you actually get to see what they understand about average speed.

The rubric (the part teachers actually want)

Every project, no matter which option a student picks, is graded on the same 100-point rubric. Five categories at 20 points each:

• Vocabulary (20 pts) — At least four words from the lesson are used in context.
• Concepts (20 pts) — At least two key concepts from the lesson are referenced.
• Presentation (20 pts) — The project grabs attention and is well-organized.
• Clarity (20 pts) — Easy to understand. Free of typos.
• Accuracy (20 pts) — Calculations and units are correct. The science is right.

The rubric uses a minus / check / plus shorthand on every row so you can grade a stack of projects quickly without re-reading every criterion.

Two differentiated versions in one file

The standard version is for students ready for independent application of the speed formula. The Reinforcement version is for students who need additional vocabulary or concept support. Three of the six options are swapped for projects with a tighter vocabulary tie-in, and "design your own" is replaced with "collaborate with the teacher" so kids aren't pitching cold.

✅ Evaluate

The Evaluate phase wraps the unit with a formal assessment. It's not all bubble-in. Several questions hand students a story problem or a data table and ask them to calculate the average speed and show their unit work.

The full assessment has 12 questions across five formats:

• Multiple choice (4 questions) covering the speed formula, units, and the difference between instantaneous and average speed
• Hotspot / visual (2 questions) where students identify the correct setup for measuring distance and time and circle the correct unit for a given problem
• Multiselect (2 questions) where students pick all the correct units for speed or all the correct steps in a calculation
• Short answer (2 questions) on why units matter and how to find average speed from a multi-leg trip
• Multipart scenario (2 questions) with a real-world setup (a runner, a road trip) where students calculate the average speed, justify their work, and explain what the number means

A modified version is included for students who need additional support. Fewer multiple-choice distractors and sentence-starter scaffolds on the short-answer items.

If you've taught all five phases, this assessment shouldn't surprise anyone. It's a chance for kids to show you they get it.