May the Forces be With You – Overview
Overview
The following lesson plans have been developed to support primary school teachers of science who are participating in the Einstein-First project. The Year 4 program builds on what students learnt about atoms and molecules from Atom Frenzy and Hot Stuff. In Year 4, students are introduced to our current understanding of forces.
Students will leave primary school with the language and conceptual foundations that prepare them for further development of modern understandings of science in middle school.
The Einstein-First project began by developing innovative methods for teaching Year 3 to 10 students Einsteinian physics concepts – curved space, warped time, photons, black holes and quantum entanglement. The project led to an international collaboration and partnerships with education authorities and Australian primary and secondary schools.
Feedback from the trial of these lessons suggested there is too much to be taught in the 45 to 60 minutes per week typically allocated to science in most primary schools. Some of the activities work very well as Health and Physical Education lessons (AC9HP4M03), which may help schools integrate science into other learning areas. Noting that the School Curriculum and Standards Authority notionally allocate up to 120 minutes per week, and some schools have adopted this extra time, we have revised the lesson plans to make it clear that only the first six or seven lessons are considered ‘foundation’ and the other one or two in each module are considered ‘extension’. In addition, the essential elements of each lesson are presented first, and additional optional parts are presented at the end of each lesson. We hope this addresses the time issues raised and also helps teachers differentiate their teaching.
The project will lay the foundation for modernising the Australian science curriculum so that all Australian children can share our best understanding of physical reality. Through international collaboration, we will bring the new curriculum to children across the world.
The lesson plans are produced in this digital format, so any teacher can easily adapt them for their own classrooms. We encourage you to do so.
Potential for Integration with Health and Physical Education
Some activities from the Year 4 unit, particularly Lesson 1 (Sporty Forces), lend themselves well to integration with Health and Physical Education. These lessons naturally involve movement and group interaction and align with the curriculum content description:
AC9HP4M03 – Demonstrate how movement concepts related to effort, space, time, objects and people can be applied when performing movement sequences.
For example, throwing and catching activities with balls of different masses can be used to explore concepts of force and motion while also developing coordination and spatial awareness. Teachers could design movement sequences that involve pushing, pulling, accelerating, and stopping in ways that make explicit links between scientific and physical movement concepts.
How to use this online platform
This is an online platform for the Year 4 May the Forces be With You module. It contains all of the lesson plans, background science learning, and other resources such as activity videos, worksheets, PowerPoints, and tests, required for teachers to present this Einstein-First module to their students. Click on the sections below to reveal overview information for the May the Forces be with You module and follow the links in the blue menu above to view other pages in the module. All resources are linked in their relevant locations throughout the lesson plans, or a collection of all downloadable resources can be found under the ‘Resources’ tab. If you notice any errors please Contact Us to let us know.
Understanding the modern concept of force provides students with a foundation for a range of science topics in upper primary and secondary years. In Year 4, students explore the language of force and its associated quantities – such as mass, speed, acceleration, momentum, friction, and inertia – through engaging hands-on experiences.
Lessons 1 to 5 of May the Forces be with You introduce foundational ideas about mechanical forces, combining physical activity and group experiments to explore how forces work in everyday situations. These lessons form the conceptual core of the module. Students investigate push and pull interactions, represent forces with arrows, and use rubber bands to measure and compare the strength of forces. They then explore Einstein’s theory of gravity using the spacetime simulator to develop an intuitive understanding of curved spacetime.
Lessons 6 to 8 of May the Forces be with You provide extension opportunities that explore invisible forces such as static electricity, magnetism, and electromagnetism. These lessons build on students’ understanding of interactions at a distance and allow them to engage with real-world applications and simple devices.
The key Australian Curriculum learning outcome for this module is:
AC9S4U03 – Identify how forces can be exerted by one object on another and investigate the effect of frictional, gravitational and magnetic forces on the motion of objects
Learning intentions – Students will:
- know that force is measured in Newtons (N) and that on Earth, 100 grams has a weight force of 1 N and 1 kilogram has a weight force of about 10 N
- explain that the larger the force, the faster an object that is free to move will go and the further it will travel
- analyse force diagrams to state if forces are balanced causing an object to keep constant motion, or unbalanced causing an object to speed up or slow down
- know that matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells matter how to move
- know that gravity is curved spacetime
- know that everything wants to be in free fall and that what we feel as weight is the force that stops things from falling
- explain that when an object gains or loses electrons it becomes charged
- know that the electric (electrostatic) force between objects with opposite charges attract and objects with like charges repel
- describe electrostatic phenomena and related technologies
- explore the forces of attraction and repulsion between magnets
- know that like magnetic poles repel and opposite magnetic poles attract
- explain how magnetic compasses can be used for navigation
- know that magnetism results from moving electrons
- make a simple electromagnet
Science education research over the last five decades and more general education research on factors affecting learning over the last three decades have identified teaching strategies that, when applied well, result in all students making significant progress.
Lessons should include active learning and be exciting and fun for both the students and teacher. Learning activity types include kinesthetic learning through role play and acting out, brief plays to act out historical perspectives, science investigations, using models and analogies, drawing on digital animations. Hopefully, students engagement and excitement will flow over to the parents, grandparents and other carers.
Strategies that we use throughout the lessons, and we hope become common practice in most teachers ‘kitbag’ of strategies are listed below:
- Ensuring clarity of purpose: Orienting students to the language and ideas using a ‘See, think, wonder’ visible thinking strategy and specifying clear, concise learning intentions for the whole module and each lesson.
- Feedback: Administer pre-test to determine prior class and individual knowledge, have frequent ‘checking for understanding’ opportunities, structured and unstructured.
- Explicit teaching: New concepts will need to be explicitly taught using the routines established by schools. Provide high quality, explicit feedback.
- Collaborative learning: Almost all lessons provide strong collaborative learning opportunities.
- Metacognitive strategies: Use the explanatory power of science to help students understand and develop an intuitive understanding of their world.
- Differentiated teaching: Many of the lessons include extension activities and exercises.
See our Key strategies in teaching Einsteinian physics document for more details
Acknowledgements
The Einstein-First curriculum resources were developed with the support of funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council and the following partner organisations: the Department of Education Western Australia; Association of Independent Schools Western Australia, Science Teachers Association of Western Australia, and Gravity Discovery Centre.
Additional funds have been generously donated to The University by private companies to further develop and implement the program. The companies include:
