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Earth / Space Science Kit Resources Vancouver School District
Motion and Design combines these two interests of young children. It enables students to analyze the motion of vehicles they have built, investigate how forces affect a vehicle's motion, and design vehicles that are propelled by stored energy. In Motion and Design, students explore the physics of motion and apply these concepts to technological design. Using plastic construction materials, weights, rubber bands, and propellers, students design and build vehicles. Students record their designs using technical two-view and three-view drawings. They test how fast the vehicles move and use their findings to redesign the vehicles to move more efficiently. As students design their vehicles, they intuitively apply concepts such as friction and kinetic and potential energy. They also explore the effect of gravity on motion. The unit concludes by challenging students to solve a design challenge and to present their findings to the class. By observing various properties associated to the Motion and
Design kit, you'll help students begin to understand the diversity
of physical properties we experience everyday in nature. With
the activities in Motion and design, you'll encourage your students
to observe and detail This is a very exciting unit for young students because they have a chance to observe, touch, design, model, test and compare changes for a number of experiences as they · Plan an conduct scientific investigations on causes
and changes in the state of
This is a rich unit for students. Just as engineers do, students test their vehicle designs and repeatedly evaluate and refine them until the designs meet specifications. They apply physics concepts to solve practical problems. Their introduction to technical drawing improves their record-keeping skills and extends their visual perception. As a class, students share in the creativity of solving problems, testing ideas, and presenting results. Finally, students reflect on their work throughout the unit and grasp how they can apply these problem-solving skills and concepts in their own world. Essential Lessons: 1-3 4, 5-7, 8, 10, 11, 12 In doing each of the essential lessons, all content and performance standards will be met for the Washington State EALR's and Benchmarks. The lessons can be done in clusters or combined grouping. To ease Kit usage the following lessons should be done in the above sequence. The instructional approach to enhance student inquiry and discovery is to combine the lessons in clusters (1-3), 4, (5-7), 8, (10-12) and then culminate the unit with final project assessment (which can actually be one of the later lessons.) Additional assessments could be provided via further questions and challenges for evaluating students' progress from individual student driven questions, or you could include the examination of real-world vehicles and the development of portfolios in which students organize and display a selection of their work from the unit. The grayed lessons should be done if time is available. This will assure that you will be able to accommodate all EALR and WASL requirements. If time is not available the grayed lessons could be eliminated, but this means that you will need to assure that the remaining lessons are done in breadth and depth.
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A toddler pushes a plastic car
across the floor. A young boy struggles to pull a wagon loaded
with wooden blocks. A girl notices that her bicycle wheel rubs
on the fender, making the bike difficult to ride. From an early
age, children experience the principles of motion when they play
with wheeled toys or use vehicles for recreation. Children are
also natural designers and builders. They play with whatever
materials are at hand and experiment freely to try out their
ideas. Children who have access to building sets learn to manipulate
the parts, make changes to an object they have built, or add
interesting features to it.