Newton’s Laws of Motion

This week’s assignment was to find technological tools that will help motivate students in a topic found in physical science. For my topic I chose Newton’s Laws of Motion and I found interesting activities, lessons, and videos to use in the classroom. For this topic I was looking for simulations that I could use with my sixth grade class. A lot of simulations I found for this topic were geared more towards high school students unless it was tied into a game (see below). The other challenge at the school I currently teach at is not having computers that can be used for class. Our computer labs are booked with other classes such as foreign language and computer skills classes. Unless you teach one of those classes, computers are not always an option. Because of this I found activities that can be used in your classroom and that can be used to teach skills such as creating graphs, data tables, and understanding their results before they learn to create them on a computer.

These are some links I found that can be used on a computer:

http://science.discovery.com/interactives/literacy/newton/newton.html - Newton’s Law of Motion Interactive

                This is a great way to introduce Newton’s laws or to use as a review before students can use the computer to further their understanding. Students are involved in the demonstrations and explain the topic so it is easy to understand. This website has a quiz at the end to check students understanding.

http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/bumpercars/

This website is a great way to look at Newton’s second and third laws. It explains the situation of the two bumper cars and based on what you know through background experience or by Newton’s laws you choose what you think will happen when the two bumper cars collide.

http://www.popsci.com/adam-weiner/article/2008-09/playing-games-science-n3wton

This game focuses on Newton’s third law. The goal is to hit the opponent out of the box before you get hit out of the box.

http://www.urlwire.com/news/070605.html   

This game is called 3 Puck Chuck. Players earn points by knocking the goal puck into a target and opponent’s game pucks into traps. Obstacles and varying surfaces cause players to account for Newton’s Laws of Motion as they make the necessary adjustments to speed, direction, and physical properties.

Here are some links that can be used in the classroom:

http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/661.html - Six Mini Labs on Newton’s Laws

                For these activities you group students into six groups and have them rotate after a certain amount of time. These activities work great if you have a small classroom budget because these items can be found at home or a Dollar Store.  It provides questions to check for understanding at the end of each activity or when all the activities are completed.

http://www.neok12.com/Laws-of-Motion.htm - Videos

                This link has videos that show Newton’s laws of motion and several other physical science topics. They are engaging and can catch the student’s attention.

All of these tools will help students be successful in the 21^st-century. For sixth graders, many of them are still learning the basics of how to use a computer. These activities will help build their computer skills while still learning about science. I feel it is important for my sixth grade students to have a basic understanding of how graphs and data tables are created and what results they show before going to the computer lab to create them. If they have a good foundation by the end of middle school and the beginning of high school then the higher level teachers will be able to easily teach the students how to create graphs and data tables on a computer. If I was to use the links above I would first teach the basics of Newton’s laws and include the videos for examples. The next day I would take them to the computer lab to complete the activities found on the computer. When students return for the next science class we would discuss how these activities relate to Newton’s Laws. Students can then complete the six mini labs to discover what law relates to each activity and why. By using several different types of activities my students will be successful in learning more about this topic.