The Car and the Stickers
A small weight hangs off the table on a string. It pulls Ana's toy car with a steady pull.
Will the car move the same distance every second?
Page 1
Science · Grade 3 Science
Chapter 1: Forces and Motion
Read four rows, then say what the fifth will be.
A small weight hangs off the table on a string. It pulls Ana's toy car with a steady pull.
Will the car move the same distance every second?
Make your guess to turn the page.
Still to come: 8 pages · Words to Know · What We Learned · 4 questions · Explain It in Writing · Ask and Wonder
The idea this lesson is working on — Children expect a steady pull to give a steady speed, because that is what pushing a trolley feels like. Ana's stickers show the gaps growing — 4, 12, 20, 28 cm — while the weight never changes. Ask: if the car went at one speed, what would the gaps look like? An unbalanced force speeds a thing up; it does not set its speed.
A wrong prediction is useful — If the fifth sticker had not matched the prediction, either the pattern was not what Ana thought or something went wrong in the test. Either way she would have learned something she would not have otherwise. Praise the prediction, not only the right one.