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Forces and Interactions

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What topics might need to precede and follow your topic at each level?

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What topics might need to precede and follow your topic at each level?

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Kindergarten:

Prior to this lesson students must have an understanding of what a push and a pull is. This lesson will build upon and solidify the student’s already established knowledge that pushes and pulls have different strengths and that pushing or pulling on an object can change the speed or direction of its motion as well as start or stop it. This is a topic learned in the Primary Level before students enter Kindergarten.

When students enter 1st grade, the topic of pushes/pulls is not used. Therefore, following this topic in 2nd grade, students will need to use their prior knowledge of solids, liquids, and the strengths of pushes vs pulls to understand that different properties are suited for different purposes. Examples of properties could include strength, flexibility, hardness, texture, and absorbency.

3rd Grade:

Moving into the topic of balanced and unbalanced forces that is explicitly taught in 3rd grade, prior to this lesson, students must have an understanding of what a push and a pull is/ the strengths that each possess as students will be required to use tools and materials to construct an push/pull object that shows the various speeds in both. Students must use their prior knowledge of pushes/pulls to know how each is able to change its speed or direction of motion as well as start or stop in order to successfully show these speeds at a 3rd grade level.

Following this topic, as students further their knowledge and advance into 4th grade, they will have to use their prior knowledge of speed and how it is related to its weight to fully understand the 4th grade topic that an object contains more energy when in a faster motion verses a slower motion.
-JJ

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What kinds of activities would you use to support your topic at each level?  (They might be similar, but they should be different.)  Briefly describe the activities in enough detail that a reader could understand what is expected in the activities, discern the similarities, and clearly understand the differences.

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What kinds of activities would you use to support your topic at each level?  (They might be similar, but they should be different.)  Briefly describe the activities in enough detail that a reader could understand what is expected in the activities, discern the similarities, and clearly understand the differences.

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For a Kindergarten activity, the students will be completing a guided activity that demonstrates the differences between push and pull forces as well as how speed and direction can have an effect.  This activity will use basic vocabulary to introduce students to balanced and unbalanced forces such as push and pull.  They will be working with toy cars for this activity.  The students will be pushing these cars at different speeds and on different inclines to learn that the harder the push, the more speed the car will have and that the larger the pull on the car is, the faster it will slow down.  Toy cars will also be dropped from the height of the desks or some other object to explore the force of gravity.  This would be done multiple times with cars of the same weight and different to show the differences happen every time.
For a 3rd grade activity, students will be building on the information they should already know.  They will expand their vocabulary to include new words such as “balanced” and “unbalanced” instead of “push” and “pull”.We would be using toy cars for this activity like what was done with the Kindergarten activity.  Instruction would begin with balanced forces and demonstrate to the students that when there is the same amount of force on all sides of the car, it will not move.  Then, we would move into unbalanced forces and help them to understand that movement will occur when there is force on only one or a couple of the sides of an object.  The students will be instructed to push toy cars down multiple tracks.  The first track will be a straight incline while the second one will have a turn in the track to show how the change in direction will affect the speed and motion of the toy car.  There will be a variety of cars of different weights to demonstrate to students that the amount of weight bringing the car down the track also has an effect on how much force the car will have when travelling down the inclined track.  Lastly, we can introduce the transfer of motion by pushing one car into a balanced car, that is not in motion, to show that the forces from the moving car will transfer to the “parked” car and cause it to begin moving.

-KB

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Assigned Topic Through Multiple Grade Levels:

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Assigned Topic Through Multiple Grade Levels:

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K-PS2-1: Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object.
- PS2.A: Forces and Motion
Pushes and pulls can have different strengths and directions.
Pushing or pulling on an object can change the speed or direction of its motion and can start or stop it.
- PS2.B: Types of Interactions
When objects touch or collide, they push on one another and can change motion.
- PS3.C: Relationship Between Energy and Forces
A bigger push or pull makes things speed up or slow down more quickly. (secondary)
- JJ

3rd Grade Standard:
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.
- PS2.A: Forces and Motion
Each force acts on one particular object and has both
strength and a direction. An object at rest typically has multiple forces acting on it, but they add to give zero net force on the object. Forces that do not sum to zero can cause changes in the object’s speed or direction of
motion. (3-PS2-1)
- PS2.B: Types of Interactions
Objects in contact exert forces on each other. (3-PS2-1)

- MJ

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2 Different Grade Levels Addressed: (K OR 1 OR 2) AND (3 OR 4 OR 5)

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2 Different Grade Levels Addressed: (K OR 1 OR 2) AND (3 OR 4 OR 5)

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Kindergarten and 3rd grade

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Balanced and unbalanced forces

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How would you differentiate your instruction at each level?  Why would you make the modifications you described?

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How would you differentiate your instruction at each level?  Why would you make the modifications you described?

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For both kindergarten and 3rd grade we would use the process-oriented inquiry methodology which provides the tools for students at all levels of achievement to be successful. This method helps all students by encouraging study in areas of interest and providing opportunities for hands-on learning. For students with disabilities, the group activities and reduced need for reading and writing helps them access the information, along with any other time or technology modifications they may need. For students who are gifted and talented, rather than giving them more of the same kind of work, we would provide material for them to investigate deeper the topic at hand (Martin, 247-252). Another way to differentiate your instruction is for you to address each type of modality in your lesson. There should be a visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic way for your student to interact with the lesson. These modifications will provide a way for all students at both grade levels, to access the material in the way most comfortable for them (Martin, 224-225).  GM

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What developmental differences (in students) need to be addressed at each level? For example, what developmental changes take place between K/1/2 and 3/4/5 that would have an impact on what you teach and how you teach it?  

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What developmental differences (in students) need to be addressed at each level? For example, what developmental changes take place between K/1/2 and 3/4/5 that would have an impact on what you teach and how you teach it?  

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Between kindergarten and third grade students will be moving from pre-operational to the concrete operational stage of development. It’s important to understand the intellectual capabilities of students at different stages to guide your lesson plans. Students in both stages do best learning through hands-on manipulatives. A student in the pre-operational stage is mastering the use of language and symbols which can be seen in their pretend play. Students at this stage of development can do step by step problems but not reverse operations. This means you should not expect your pre-operational student to automatically infer that if 2+2=4 than 4-2 must equal 2.

As students enter the concrete operational stage they will be developing skills such as operation reversal, conversion, classifying and hypothesizing. Students at this stage can do these more abstract reasoning skills when they have a concrete topic to work with. A kindergartner would participate in science lessons that involve simple tests that allow them to collect evidence to support or refute their ideas. A third grader would build on their kindergarten knowledge through completing more complex science lessons. Some examples of more complex third grade skills are making predictions, studying patterns, analyzing cause and affect relationships, making inference, and analyzing data. GM
(Martin, 174-177)

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How might you use this information as a new teacher?

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How might you use this information as a new teacher?

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As a new teacher, this information assures that students know the basis for a certain topic and then later on that same topic is reinforced and expanded on. Looking through the standards for each grade level will let you see what your students past teachers already touched upon so then you can further their knowledge on a certain topic. However, as a teacher you need to understand that some students might not have fully grasped the past concepts learned and you might need to refresh their memory or reteach. As new teachers, introducing a new topic to students can be very hard and difficult to find an approach. Relating the newly more advanced topics to topics the students already learned will help them make connections  and make them more comfortable with the advanced topics since they already have background knowledge. Sequenced curriculum is beneficial to new teachers because it ensures that the more simpler concepts are presented before the more complex ones. This makes it easier for the teacher to connect the more complex concepts to the simpler ones.
- MJ

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Martin, D.J. (2012). Constructivism in Elementary Science Education. M.D. Kerr (Ed.). Elementary Science Methods: A Constructivist Approach. (Sixth ed.) Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

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How is it sequenced in the curriculum at each level? Does your topic have multiple components?  If so, how should those components be sequenced? 

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How is it sequenced in the curriculum at each level? Does your topic have multiple components?  If so, how should those components be sequenced? 

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Balanced and unbalanced forces do have multiple components. There are concepts that need to be understood before you can dive into the topic of balanced and unbalanced forces effectively.
There are several components to the specified focus area and ways to sequence it through the grade levels.
In the curriculum forces are introduced in Kindergarten without much specification for balanced and unbalanced forces. Students are introduced to the fact that there are different effects on the push and pull of objects in reference to the strength. This idea of pushing and pulling is the first idea they are introduced to in order to progress to understanding balanced and unbalanced forces. At this level they are not yet expected to understand this terminology, but they are getting a preview by learning about the pushing and pulling of an object effecting the speed and directions, and the bigger the push or pull the faster the object moves, and the smaller the push or pull the slower the object moves. These are the beginning stages of forces that will give students an opening into the understanding of forces as a whole.
As we progress on to the next part of the curriculum for 3rd grade students would have needed to be introduced to forces and how they work and act on objects. Students will be taught previously what a force is, what is means for a force to me in motion, and what it means for a force to balanced or unbalanced. Progressing onto this curriculum students will now understand what a force is, what it means to be balanced, and what it means to be unbalanced. Students will also understand that when a force acts on an object the object has both strength and direction as well as the concept of an object being at rest and still having multiple forces acting on it.
Without the concepts being in this order and the multiple aspects being taught in a sequenced manner, it may be hard to grasp the multiple components of the concept of Forces as well as the more specified topic of balanced and unbalanced forces.  Sequenced curriculum is intentionally done to provide that flow through the grade level so students can make those connections to help them better understand the newer more advanced topics once they learn them.
MF

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How much of the topic is taught at each level and in how much depth is it addressed?

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How much of the topic is taught at each level and in how much depth is it addressed?

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For the Kindergarten level, the topic of balanced and unbalanced forces is not explicitly taught, however, vocabulary terms are taught that help to lay the foundation down for this topic. The terms push and pull are taught within this grade level. Students will understand that:

Pushes and pulls can have different strengths and directions.

The amount of push or pull one object has on an another will affect its speed/direction.

When objects touch/collide the motion of they push on one another altering the motion.

The larger the push = the more speed that object will have.

The larger the pull = the faster the slowdown that object will have.

In this level students will plan and carry out investigations, with guidance, using a variety of ways scientists use to study the real world. Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence on a student's knowledge.

For the 3rd grade level, the topic of balanced and unbalanced forces is explicitly taught. The vocabulary words learned in the kindergarten level, push and pull, are referenced in terms of objects using their own force/weight/gravity to move rather than being moved by an outside source. Students at this level will understand that:

An unbalanced force on one side of an object can make it start moving.

Balanced forces pushing on an object from all sides will not produce any motion at all, therefore, producing no movement.

Gravity is a force that pulls down an object.

Forces that do not sum to zero, unequal forces, can cause changes in an object’s speed or direction of motion.

Objects in contact will exert force upon one another

In this grade level students will plan and carry out investigations, using a variety of tools and techniques, to test these statements. Students will have to identify cause and affect relationships.
-JJ