Students complete this pencil and paper task to check they understand that a force causes a change to motion and is not an intrinsic property of an object. It might be done by individual students or by students working in pairs to agree their answers.

Differentiation

It may be appropriate to read the text to some students, so they can focus on the science ideas.

Hitting a rounders ball

John was batting. He hit the rounders ball with a lot of force. It flew quickly through the air with so much momentum that James found it hard to stop. James had to use a lot of force to stop it.

Riding on a shopping trolley

After her shopping Jane liked to run with the trolley in the car park and jump on. At the end of her shop it was heavy so she needed a lot of force to make it move. It was hard to stop because it had a lot of momentum. She needed a lot of force to stop it.

Driver, R., Squires, A., Rushworth, P. and Wood-Robinson, V. (1994) Making sense of secondary science, research into children’s ideas, Routledge, London, England.