Force and Play

Building background knowledge is hugely important in making connections.  Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences and need some common experiences to draw from.  While force and motion are very easy to relate to real world situations, I feel that it also important to throw a little relevance and fun into the learning equation.

Enter marbles..... Discovery Education had a really great article that discussed how marbles and force were connected.  The diagrams were great, and encouraged students to play and get that hands on experience.  We created a marble circle in our room and I printed out instructions, so students would have some rules to go by.  The marble circle was on the small side and the students encountered some glitches with the prescribed rules and tweaked them to meet their needs.  All in all, marbles were a success.  Students were able to effectively communicate what they were learning as they were playing the game. 


The Rube Goldberg Machine
I purchased this from Target.  There were several sets from which to choose but this one looked the coolest.  Students had some background understanding of what a Rube Goldberg machine was because they had watched the Ok Go video while we were studying energy.  This set was tricky and the students never were able to get it to work.  This is partially due to time constraints and partially due to the free exploration which allowed students to walk away and try something else.



Dominoes/Build your own Rube Goldberg
This activity was popular and students enjoyed the challenge.  They preferred it to the prefabricated set.  They came up with some creative ideas and needed just a little bit more time to finish.

All in all, I think students had a great time learning through play.  They were free to express their creativity (within the constraints) and built that background knowledge that some of them severely lack.

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