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RachaelTarshes
Understanding Roller Coasters
A Unit Plan for Forces and Motion
8th Grade Science
Subject area description
Eighth grade students at CollegePlaceMiddle School will be learning about forces and motion for about three weeks for a total of 12 classes. Three of the 12 classes are mid-week blocks in which students are in class for 100 minutes rather than the standard 50 minutes. In order to utilize the block schedule efficiently, students will perform major aspects of their inquiry during the block classes. During block periods, students will perform experiments and collect data, as well as have a debriefing regarding their findings. The debriefing is an important aspect of inquiry days because it allows students to see new connections between what they have done and what they initially thought. For the 50-minute classes, students will do such things as be introduced to new concepts, discuss ideas for their culminating project, work on their formal report and take an exam.
Although students already have been introduced to forces and motion that are involved in flight (drag, gravity, lift, and thrust), the goal of this unit is to provide students with an understanding of forces and motion that they encounter everyday such as the falling of an object. This unit will also expand upon students’ experience with scientific inquiry. Thus far, students have experienced inquiry more as confirmatory exercises in which their findings reinforce concepts that they learned. However, in this unit, students will develop new ideas based on their own data. The inquiry project has been designed as a mix between guided and structured inquiry. The main inquiry students will perform is the roller coaster culminating project. By the end of the project, students will discover the relationship of Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion: F = ma. Three main teaching strategies will be used throughout unit: eliciting students’ ideas, guided exploration, and interactive concept building.
Essential question: How can we build the fastest roller coaster in the world?
The SeattleCenter has just hired you onto their team for a special project. Working with other scientists, you have been asked to construct the world’s fastest roller coaster. The current fastest roller coaster is The Top Thrill Dragster that is at Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio and it reaches a maximum speed of 120mph.
- Students will need to know how a roller coaster works to begin answering this question. They will need to address their preconceptions and work together to develop their knowledge of force and motion actions and interactions. Students will develop an understanding of what they would need to change on a roller coaster in order to get their desired results.
Learning goals and objectives:
1. Students will be able to describe the positions, relative speeds, and changes in speed of objects. (EARL 1.1.2)
1.1Students will be able to explain how mass, force, and acceleration are related.
1.2Students will generalize the key concept that speed measures how fast position changes.
1.3 Students will generalize the key concept that acceleration measures how fast velocity changes.
1.4 Students will apply principles of forces and motion they have learned to new situations.
1.5 Students will explain how speed is measured.
1.6 Students will predict how speed can be changed.
2. Students will understand that energy is a property of substances and comes in many forma such as the energy of motion. (EARL 1.2.2)
2.1 Students will understand that energy is conserved.
2.2 Students will be able to define potential and kinetic energy.
3. Students will know the factors that determine the strength of various forces. (EARL 1.3.1)
3.1 Students will understand the affects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
3.2 Students will know how Newton’s 1st Law operates.
3.3 Students will prove the relationship of Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion.
4. Students will develop the abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry. (EARL 2.1)
4.1 Students will conduct a scientific investigation using appropriate equipment and mathematics.
4.2 Students will analyze data to compare and contrast multiple outcomes.
4.3 Students will communicate scientific investigations and explanations in writing. (EARL 2.1.5)
4.4 Students will be able to justify their roller coaster designs based on principles of forces, measurements of motion, and energy.
4.5 Students will identify assumptions about how roller coasters work.
4.6 Students will provide evidence based on forces and motion to make predictions about a scientific investigation.
5. Students will be able to value discussion with their peers about scientific thinking and findings.
5.1 Students will be able to respectfully challenge others’ ideas/thinking.
5.2 Students will be able to work cooperatively to solve a problem and/or answer a question.
Unit matrix
Week 1 – Day 1 / Monday 50 Minutes1. What students are doing / Students will be shown a roller coaster video clip.
Eliciting students’ ideas: How do roller coasters operate? Students will answer the following questions regarding roller coasters in their lab notebooks:
What do you know?
What do you think you know?
What do you want to know?
Students will do a Think/Pair/Share with their answers. They will work together through class discussion to create a collective chart.
2. Objectives / 4.5 Students will identify assumptions about how roller coasters work.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase I of Inquiry: The roller coaster video clip serves as the hook for the unit. Hopefully most if not all of the students will have a past experience with roller coasters. At the very start of the year, the students will be presented with a roller coaster extra credit opportunity. The reasoning behind that activity is to expose or refresh the students to how it feels to ride on a roller coaster.
The think/pair/share activity uses the eliciting students’ ideas teaching strategy to learn about students’ prior knowledge and what they are interested in learning about roller coasters. Students’ prior knowledge will be used as a place to start the unit and at this point, students’ misconceptions will hopefully arise and be addressed. This activity will also be used as a way to track what students have learned. At the end of the unit students will look back on this activity and be asked what items have moved from the “want to know” and “think I know” to the “I know” categories.
4. Evidence of understanding / Collective chart, student journals, student dialogue
5. Resources / Roller coaster video clip, butcher paper, markers
Week 1 – Day 2 / Tuesday/Wednesday 100 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will have a quick review on mass. What is mass? How is it measured?
Hook - Airplane travels at 345 mph. Car traveling at 35 mph toward the east. Eagle dives faster and faster. In groups, students will answer the following questions about the hook examples:
What is the difference between the examples?
What does each example measure?
What is being measured in each example?
How is it measured?
Group sharing and class discussion about the questions - define speed, velocity, and acceleration.
Students will then perform a lab activity on measuring speed. After the lab, students will share their data as a class and have a sense making discussion. The discussion will focus around this question from their lab: How did changing the time affect the motion of the ball? (Change in force)
2. Objectives / 1.0 Students will be able to describe the positions, relative speeds, and changes in speed of objects.
1.5 Students will explain how speed is measured.
1.6 Students will predict how speed can be changed.
1.2 Students will generalize the key concept that speed measures how fast position changes.
5.2 Students will be able to work cooperatively to solve a problem and/or answer a question.[1]
5.1 Students will be able to respectfully challenge others’ ideas/thinking.[2]
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase I of Inquiry: The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to terms that describe motion. Students need to have an understanding of motion before they can learn and understand how forces influence motion.
The examples serve as a hook because they are something to which students can relate. Along with the examples are the questions. These two items combined guide students to an understanding of the terminology involved in motion.
In this activity, students are allowed to have ownership of the content they generated because they are the ones contributing to the discussion of what the terms mean.
The chosen instructional activity for this day is guided exploration as a means of having the students work to construct rules and discover relationships about different phenomena.
The lab activity will give the students the opportunity to work collaboratively to build upon their knowledge of different ways to measure position. Student data will be shared and graphically organized for deeper understanding and later use.
4. Evidence of understanding / Class data, student journals, practice problems homework
5. Resources / tennis balls, meter sticks, stopwatches, tape
Week 1 – Day 3 / Thursday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will be given a real life example of velocity (walking in a crowd) and asked: Velocity vs. Speed – How are they different? How are they the same? They will be given time to write responses in their journals which will be followed by a brief class discussion.
Demonstration: bouncing balls. Students will be asked: How does velocity change? How is that change measured?
Class discussion moves to the idea of acceleration and how it is measured. Students will go back to their graphs from the previous day and do some acceleration calculations.
Introduce Roller Coaster Project.
2. Objectives / 1.3 Students will generalize the key concept that acceleration measures how fast velocity changes.
1.0 Students will be able to describe the positions, relative speeds, and changes in speed of objects.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase I of Inquiry: This day is a continuation of the previous day’s introduction to speed, velocity, and acceleration. It serves as an interactive concept building day for students to gain background information that they will need when conducting their inquiries.
Velocity and acceleration are more complex calculations than speed thus the students can benefit by having more teacher guidance.
The Roller Coaster Project is being introduced as a means of connecting all the work the students have done so far and letting them know where they will be going with it.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journal, practice problem homework
5. Resources / Tennis balls
Week 1 – Day 4 / Friday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Hook – Non-moving object and moving object. As a class:
□Describe the motion of the objects
□Can you change their motion?
□Will it change by itself?
Class discussion will follow with the goal of working towards a general rule for this phenomenon. (Newton’s 1st Law)
Extension – Lab Activity: How can you change an object’s motion? Students will work with different objects to change their motion in several ways and make predictions about what is needed to make those changes. This activity is followed by a class discussion about student ideas and results. Students will be able with discussion to generalize the key concept that force changes motion.
Present the key concept that force transfers momentum. Students will be given real life examples of what momentum is and how it relates to their everyday life (cars and seat belts).
2. Objectives / 3.1. Students will understand the affects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
3.2. Students will know how Newton’s 1st Law operates.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase I of Inquiry: Another day of interactive concept building deepens students understanding of motion and relates it to forces. Students have worked with the idea of force previously under a different context (flight) and by revisiting it before they start their inquiries; they will have a general idea of the role that forces plays in the motion of objects.
It is important for Newton’s 1st Law to be presented before the students do their work on Newton’s 2nd Law because the 1st law is easier to observe and talk about.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals, practice problems homework
5. Resources / Quarters, books, tennis balls, cups, feathers
Week 2 – Day 5 / Monday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Warm-up: What is energy? What are some examples of energy that you encountered this morning from the time you woke up until the time you got to science class?
Students will be introduced to the term “work”. Class discussion will ask students to think about how work relates to energy. (Need energy to do work)
Demonstration: Holding a ball in the palm of your hand…
□Does the ball have energy?
□Why or why not?
Potential and kinetic energy will be defined and students will do a journaling activity. They will be asked to make a chart and list examples of potential and kinetic energy. (Key concept – energy is transferred when work is done) Think/Pair/Share
Ask students: What happens to the energy? Is all of it transferred? If not, where did it go? (The total amount of energy is constant)
Students will be told to review the directions for their roller coaster project that will start the next day.
2. Objectives / 2.1 Students will understand that energy is conserved.
2.2 Students will be able to define potential and kinetic energy.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase I of Inquiry: The interactive concept building strategy is incorporated here to provide students with the necessary background knowledge to get started on their inquiry projects. With a shorter period and a lot of information to cover before the students start their projects, adding direct instruction to this lesson allows for all the necessary knowledge nuggets to be presented.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals, practice problems
5. Resources / Tennis ball
Week 2 – Day 6 / Tuesday/Wednesday 100 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Warm-up: What are we doing today?
Problem: What is the relationship between mass, force, and acceleration?
Students will work as a group to develop a testable hypothesis.
Students will begin construction of their roller coasters while working in small groups. The students will be asked to consider the following while constructing their roller coasters:
□What forces are involved?
□How will hills, curves, and steepness affect your coaster?
□What provides resistance? How is that important?
□Using what you have learned about motion and force, justify your design choices
□If any revisions are needed (your tennis ball must make a complete run) explain what is wrong, why, and what you are going to do to fix it
2. Objectives / 4.4 Students will be able to justify their roller coaster designs based on principles of forces, measurements of motion, and energy.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase II of Inquiry: Students are developing hypotheses to guide their inquiry. Students are applying what they have learned about force and motion in the construction of their roller coasters.
This day is simply a day for students to set-up their “experiments” so that they have enough time to collect data in the following days.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals – answers to set-up questions
5. Resources / Cardboard, tennis balls, heavy-duty scissors, hot glue gun and glue, meter stick
Week 2 – Day 7 / Thursday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Class discussion: Based on the problem and your hypothesis,
□What kind of data do you want to collect?
□How will you collect it?
□Standards? # of trials?
□How will you organize your data?
As a class, construct a graphic organizer (all students will need to collect the same type of data so that it can be compared)
Students will do their first run with just their tennis ball, collecting data and making calculations.
2. Objectives / 4.1 Students will conduct a scientific investigation using appropriate equipment and mathematics.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase III of Inquiry: In order for students to take ownership of the inquiry they will need to have an active part in its development. One aspect of that is deciding what kind of data to collect and how to collect them.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals – data and calculations
5. Resources / Student-built roller coasters, tennis balls. stopwatches, meter-sticks
Week 2 – Day 8 / Friday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Sense-making day: as a class share data
□What are the differences? Why?
□Can you see any patterns in the data?
□What errors could there be?
Introduction of revision: students will chose as a group one goal (fastest, slowest, tallest roller coaster) and ONE thing to change (ex. mass, friction, length of track). Individually for homework, the students will state what they are changing, why they chose to change that aspect, and how they will change it.
2. Objectives / 4.2 Students will analyze data to compare and contrast multiple outcomes.
4.6 Students will provide evidence based on forces and motion to make predictions about a scientific investigation.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase IV of Inquiry: Sense-making days work as a way for students to share data, determine experimental errors, and to rethink their hypotheses. This work will combine to provide the students with an educated idea of how to make revisions in order to achieve a desired outcome. Having students work individually on the justifications will provide an opportunity for individual assessment.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journal, project revision homework
5. Resources / No additional resources are needed.
Week 3 – Day 9 / Monday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will make revisions to their roller coasters.
If students have time after revising, they will collect additional data on their revised models
2. Objectives / 4.1 Students will conduct a scientific investigation using appropriate equipment and mathematics.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phases III and IV of Inquiry: It is important for students to not only analyze their outcomes and make predictions, but to also apply the knowledge gained by doing so to a revision of their initial product. By retesting, students will be able to test their revised roller coasters and check for validity in their predictions.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals
5. Resources / Student-built roller coasters, tennis balls. stopwatches, meter-sticks, weights, sand paper, oil, additional cardboard, scissors, hot-glue gun and glue
Week 3 – Day 10 / Tuesday/Wednesday 100 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will be given additional time to test their revised roller coaster. After testing is complete, students will complete all calculations and share data with the class.
During the sense-making discussion, students will be asked to revisit the problem: What is the relationship between, mass, force, and acceleration? Students will be given summary and conclusion questions to guide their thinking towards developing the model F = ma.
Wrap-up: Students will look back at the class chart from Day 1 and discuss what has changed in their knowledge and thinking.
Students will receive the rubric for their formal write up.
2. Objectives / 1.1 Students will be able to explain how mass, force, and acceleration are related.
4.2 Students will analyze data to compare and contrast multiple outcomes.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Phase V of Inquiry: Wrap-Up
It is important for students to be given the opportunity to discuss and think about the outcomes of their investigations. By having students revisit their initial concepts about how roller coasters work and reorganize it gives them a visual of how their thinking has changed in terms of what they have learned.
4. Evidence of understanding / Student journals – summary questions
5. Resources / Student journals, student-built roller coasters, tennis balls, meter sticks, stopwatches
Week 3 – Day 11 / Thursday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will begin work on their formal project write-up. They will be provided with the rubric for the write up and given guiding questions.
What principles of force and motion did you incorporate into your roller coaster project?
Using evidence from your investigation, how would you describe the relationship between mass, force, and acceleration?
2. Objectives / 4.3 Students will communicate scientific investigations and explanations in writing.
3.3 Students will prove the relationship of Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Students are provided with a day to work in class on their culminating assessment so that if they have any questions, I am available to help them. In addition, by having an in-class working day, all students will at least have done some parts of the write-up, which hopefully means they will have an understanding of the problem posed for the project.
4. Evidence of understanding / Formal write-up for the project that is due on the following Monday.
5. Resources / None required.
Week 3 – Day 12 / Friday 50 Minutes
1. What students are doing / Students will take a test on forces and motion. Students will be given time to do more work on their write-ups.
2. Objectives / 1.4 Students will apply principles of forces and motion they have learned to new situations.
3. Reasons for content and instructional strategy / Providing the students with an assessment such as a test gives the teacher an additional tool to gauge student understandings of the contented presented.
4. Evidence of understanding / Forces and motion test.
5. Resources / None required.
RachaelTarshes