My First Interaction with Children

My First Proper Interaction with Children (6th graders)

We made a device called ‘SpeeDE’ that measures the speed of an object. We thought that taking this device to school and showing it to the children would be something new to them. One day I took the device to the sixth graders. Everyone saw SpeeDe in my hand and were very eager to know about it.
I started with telling them simple stories on speed and distance.
Eg, I travelled at a speed of 20km/hr, how much distance would i have covered for 3 hrs?

Then i asked the students to make up their own stories. Lots of new stories were made up.
But they had difficulties in the units(km/hr, m/s). They were not completely comfortable with the units.
After most of them had finished telling thier own speed and distance story, it was time to measure something from our device. I started with dropping a pencil case from about a metre to measure the speed of that and asked them to guess the speed. All types of random answers came up.
Then i dropped it from about half a metre and then dropped it from close to the device. The students who were pretty close to right answer were really happy and excited.
Then i asked why does the speed vary when I drop the pencil case from different heights. Some managed to tell that as the height increases the speed of the object also increased which was pleasing to hear.
Then at the end of the class we measured the speed of their punch and kick etc..
Everything was totally a new experience for me. I came to know that handling a class is not that easy as i expected.
Students tend to get more engaged in the class when we bring hands on stuff or else its not that easy to handle a class !!