Lesson #3 - Force and Motion (hovercraft!)

We taught our third lesson yesterday to our first graders. They have just begun a science unit on force and motion (push and pull). This was the lesson we were actually most nervous about, but I think it was probably our best one! It was a great way to end a busy week. We began the lesson in the classroom by figuring out what they have already learned. The students were able to tell me that they were studying force and motion, push, pull, and turn. I asked them what each of those forces was, and most of the students were quick to respond. It seems that they have caught on to this concept pretty quickly. I used a couple of examples. The students then went through some more examples including dropping a book, bouncing a ball, typing on a keyboard, and were asked to determine whether there was a push or a pull occurring. The book and ball were a little bit advanced, but we did have one student eager to answer that gravity pulls! It seemed that he was the only one to know the concept, so we worked on beginning to explain that to them. They were also asked to stand up and show us what a push motion looks like in the air as well as a pull. They are beginning to really grasp that a pull brings something toward you and a push moves it away. We then moved to the cafeteria for the hovercraft portion of the lesson. The students were very excited for this. We did stop a few times to tell them that they needed to be on their best behavior if they wanted to participate...I have never seen this class so quiet. We reminded them again what push and pull look like. They each had a turn riding on the hovercraft. We took turns pushing and pulling them to float them around the room. The students on the craft and the students watching determined what we were about to do (push or pull) by our motions, and were able to tell us which way they would move as a result. All of the students were able to answer and had a lot of fun riding around the cafeteria.
I think that the best parts of this lesson were making the students show us what push and pull looked like. By having them get up and act it out, they were able to really see what happened. I think the examples all helped to solidify this, and the hovercraft topped it off. They were able to learn and practice while having fun.
If I were to do this activity again, I might have thought of other ways to have the rest of the class more actively involved while watching the hovercraft. Since only 2 children were on at a time, the rest of the class was watching. It worked out fine since they were excited to watch each other. We did stop to ask the whole class a few questions between riders, but I would have liked to have gotten them more involved somehow.
We are going to meet our first grade teacher today for some feedback on all of our lessons, so hopefully I'll come away with even more ideas.