The Force is everywhere

Tyler Hansen
3rd Grade Science

Common Core Standards:

3-PS2-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced
forces on the motion of an object.

3-PS2-2. Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can
be used to predict future motion.

Lesson Summary:

In this lesson, we will be testing the affects of force on an objects motion with different activities, such as a
pendulum, a ramp for toy cars, a paint pendulum, and different physical activities

Estimated Duration:

This lesson plan will most likely take 175 minutes that I plan to split over a full school week, or 5 days with 40
minutes each day except for the final day, which will be 15 minutes.

Commentary:

My approach to get the student’s invested is the experiments themselves. I imagine it would be challenging to
teach about force without any experiments, and it will be challenging on the first day when I begin to explain
force and talk about the experiments, but hopefully the students get hooked on the idea of fun activities for
school.

Instructional Procedures:

Day 1:
For the first 5 to 8 minutes I will have the students take a pre-test to test their knowledge on motion before the
lesson.
For the first 30 minutes of this day, I will discuss with students how force and motion works. I will discuss
with them the factors of air resistance, push and pull, frictions, and motion in general. This will be done with a
power point and my computer to have any extra notes on the side to look at if needed. After the lesson I will
also take any questions they might have about the power point.

After this, for the next 2 to 5 minutes depending on what time everything took, I will show the students a
pendulum to introduce them to the concept of the type of experiments we will do for the week.
Day 2:
For the first 5 minutes I will explain that we will be building different size ramps for toy cars using materials
inside the classroom. This will include showing a 10 second video at the very beginning of the lesson day
called Toy Car/Ramp Demonstration by Angela Harker to show an example of what we will be doing. After
explaining I will also put them into groups of about 4 or 5, where they can also decide who will do what, that
being either writing down information, timing, pushing the car, and speaking to the class after the lesson.

For the next 30 to 32 minutes, the students will use the blocks provided to them as well as any fabric or
material they brought to make ramps of different angles to determine which moves faster. They will time how
long it takes to get down the ramp and write it down with different angles and materials. They can do different
sizes as much as they would like but have a minimum of at least 3 different ramp sizes.

Finally, for the last 3 to 5 minutes, the groups will all come back together and discuss what they found with
their research on the ramps, including any time differences. Finally, give them a small worksheet discussing
what we did that day and asking a few questions for them to answer as homework.

Day 3:
For the first 10 minutes the students will head either outside or to the gymnasium if it is open and available.
When the students arrive there, I will hand them each a jump rope and allow them to play with it for about 5
minutes. Afterwards I will then explain how the jump rope allows them to predict the outcome of the motion,
that because they are applying a certain amount of force, they can predict when to jump.

For the next 15 minutes, I will have the students play tug of war, while they play I will explain the balance and
unbalance of forces. I will specify that when the rope is not moving even though both teams are pulling, that
shows that they have a balanced force being used, but when one team wins, that team will use more force,
causing it to be unbalanced. I will also make sure where ever we do tug of war is very padded so no student
gets hurt if they fall over.

For the final 15 minutes, I will let the students play on scooters. First I will teach them about the safe way to
use them, then as they play I will instruct them to push the scooters, to sit on the scooters and push, to pull on
the scooters, etc. After they have played for about 10 to 12 minutes, I will explain to them that they are using
different amounts of force when they play with scooters, and that it goes faster or slower depending on the
force, air resistance, and friction that is being enacted on it. Finally, give them a small worksheet discussing
what we did that day and asking a few questions for them to answer as homework.

Day 4:
For the first 10 to 15 minutes I will show the class this video:
https://www.generationgenius.com/videolessons/patterns-of-motion-and-friction-video-for-kids/. This video
discusses force and motion, but it also has a lesson that we will be working on in this class day.

For the next 20 to 25 minutes we will be working on the Pendulum Painting activity that this video gives. This
is an activity that uses paint in a home made pendulum to show and study the pattern of movement the
pendulum makes. This can also be used with different colors of paint to make some interesting art pieces.

For the final 5 minutes I will tell the students that they have a quiz to recap the lesson they learned. So I will
give them a study guide overview of what was taught through the week. Along with this, give them a small
worksheet discussing what we did that day and asking a few questions for them to answer as homework.

Day 5:
For the first 2 to 5 minutes of the class I will answer any questions that the students might have about what we
learned.

For the final 10 minutes of this lesson plan I will have them take the test they took at the beginning of the week
again to see how they have improved in the week learning. After this I will move unto the next lesson.

Pre-Assessment:
A pre-assessment I could use for this lesson would be a simple quiz on what forces they know, if any, and if
they all seem to know one or more of the forces mentioned, I would try to spend less time on those.

Scoring Guidelines:
For scoring guidelines for the pre-test, I would not mark off points on their overall grade for questions
missed in the pre-test. I will keep track of what they know and do not, while grading and marking what
was right and wrong so they can see what they can focus on for the test afterwards. I will also keep
track of how long it takes for a student to do this quiz with a turn in bucket, that way I can also tell if a
student just rushed through the test guessing.

If I had to plan for assessments, I would try to pick an experiment, such as the ramp for a toy car, and
see how students and I act when working on a project such as this and keep track of behavior and
knowledge.

Post-Assessment:
The post-assessment I will have the students take will be the pre-test once again with a tiny amount of added
questions. This will be the case because it will be easy to compare what all they have learned from where they
started.

Scoring Guidelines:
The scoring guidelines will be a percentage, but also for notes for the teacher. The percentage will help
determine their grade and to see how much they learned through the lesson, while the notes can help
the teacher determine how much the students listened and improved over the course of the lesson. This
can help the teacher write better and more personal lesson plans in the future.

Differentiated Instructional Support

Describe how instruction can be differentiated (changed or altered) to meet the needs of gifted or accelerated
students: If a student is gifted or accelerated I would give them a little more challenge with the experiments,
such as using less material with the ramp for the toy car, or I would ask them to help other students who need
assistance with the experiments if they were already done. With group work I would also try to not make a
group filled with accelerated students to allow them to help in their own group work too.

Discuss additional activities you could do to meet the needs of students who might be struggling with the
material: Some additional activities I would do with students who are struggling are giving them a list of
different videos they can watch at home, and a packet. This packet would have descriptions of every
vocabulary word, it would also have what I talked about in the slide show written out for them, and a list of
videos. These videos would be videos about force and motion that might better help them understand motion.

Extension
https://wosu.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/midlit11.sci.splgrav/forces-of-gravity-and-air-resistance/ While
this may be a little more convoluted than other websites, this interactive lesson from PBS could better help
explain air resistance and forces for students if they might be struggling to understand.

Homework Options and Home Connections

The only type of homework I would realistically assign with this lesson plan would be a simple work sheet
asking questions about what they had learned for that day. Most of the teaching will be in the classroom, so
having that be a homework assignment makes the most sense to me.

Interdisciplinary Connections
With this lesson plan, I could have them calculate the time involved with experiments. For example, I could
have them write down the times of the car down a ramp multiple times and help them take an average of that
time (mathematics), or I could have them write a paragraph of a prediction of which ramp of the toy cars will
make the car faster and to explain their reasoning (English)

Materials and Resources:

For teachers A computer with a projector for the video and power point, a pendulum for day one,
many building blocks of different sizes for day 2, as well as some fabric for the ramps
and a timer, a large rope for tug of war, jump rope, and scooters for day 3, scissors, a
hole puncher, string, paint, paper, and tripods for day 4, and the quiz on printed paper
for the pre and post assessment

For students A laptop for any research outside of school, pencil, paper, a toy car, a glue bottle,
newspaper.

Key Vocabulary
Motion
Friction
Air resistance
Force
Pendulum
Pattern of Motion

Additional Notes

This lesson is made to be slightly low technology, but can be interchanged from hands on experiments with
online interactive games that can be played to teach the students.