Big Idea 12: Motion of Objects

This is the final lesson in the unit. Students will connect with Benjamin Franklin, after reading A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin by David Adler, as an individual who represents the United States and whose curiosity led to many great explorations and impactful inventions. Students will be designing, exploring and building a kite. Through the process and with trial and error, students will describe the way their object moves and generate explanations about why their kite did or did not fly.

This unit is focused on identifying Benjamin Franklin as the topic of the text. Civics is integrated through understanding that Benjamin Franklin represents the United States. Students will explore life in the 1700’s to gain background knowledge. Teacher will create an ongoing timeline to document the major events in Ben’s life as key details. Students will solve a real world problem through invention, create a newspaper article to spread news, write both an expository and opinion piece. The assessment for the unit will be a kite that is a graphic organizer for students to identify the topic and relevant details in a text.

This resource uses a book that is on the Florida Department of Education's reading list. This book is not provided with this resource.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a Science lesson based on force and movement. As a plus the students will also be learning a little bit about the Hispanic culture and use of piñatas. Students will practice their math skills by reading a data table and adding tens and ones.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students identify ways to make objects move while recording their techniques. Students then engineer a track that will place an object as close to an exact location as possible. Students will test and revise their tracks.

Type: Lesson Plan

The students will be able to explain how a push or pull affects how an object moves, the difference of a push and pull, and the way to change how something is moving is to give it a push or a pull.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students explore the force of gravity by testing gravity's pull with parachutes. The students will investigate the idea of gravity pulling objects to the ground unless something holds it up.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson integrates science and reading. This lesson is about demonstrating how objects move and describing how they move (fast or slow, straight line, round and round).

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help first grade students apply the concepts of the various ways objects can move, and that the way to change the motion of an object is to apply a push or a pull. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Help Tallula record observations of moving objects at her local playground in this interactive science tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Looks at the different ways things can move in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Teacher-created resource on friction for 1st graders.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students explore a variety of objects to discover the many ways the objects move-up and down, straight line, in circles, back and forth. They will discover that a force (push or pull) makes it move.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this guided inquiry activity, students will use 2 marbles of different size and a box to investigate what makes the marbles move and what will cause the marbles to change speed and direction.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this unit, students explore and explain the many different ways that an object moves and how its properties affect its movements. In one lesson ("In What Ways"), students predict and test their predictions on how different objects will move when gently pushed on their desks. In "Do All Tops Spin Alike?," students use different materials to construct their own tops and test its movements. "Making Objects Move" introduces the concept of acceleration and allows students to use different sizes and types of balls and other materials to build tracks that will be used to stop the ball at a certain location. "Playground Equipment" gives an engineering experience by engaging students in a competition with a given scenario and asking them to design, test, and re-design (if necessary) a functioning piece of new playground equipment (the terms "force," "motion," "gravity," and "simple machine" are introduced).

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this unit, students use different objects and observations to explore what factors influence an objects' motion.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence