The force and motion group has been working with first and third grade teachers in the Lansing School District to develop a unit focused on forces and motion. The goal of the unit is to help students develop their observation skills by experiencing different examples of motion and then communicating their descriptions. Once students recognize that their individual descriptions of an experienced motion are different, the class then worked to create a set of conventions to describe other examples of motion. After the class conventions were developed the next step is to recognize changes in an object's motion, and begin to consider what caused the change in motion.

You can find the How Do Objects Move? Unit here.

Here is the paper presented at the NARST conference, held April 1-3, 2006 in San Francisco, CA:

‘A SKETCH IS LIKE A SENTENCE’: THE ROLE OF CURRICULUM MATERIALS IN SUPPORTING TEACHERS AND HELPING STUDENTS LEARN THE REPRESENTATIONAL, COMMUNICATIVE, EPISTEMIC AND CONCEPTUAL IDEAS AND PRACTICES OF SCIENCE

Mark Enfield, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Edward L. Smith, Michigan State University
David Grueber, Michigan State University

ABSTRACT:
This research reports on a study of curriculum materials development and enactment as well as the enactment of existing materials in an elementary classroom. The research explored the ways that instructional scaffolds strategically included in curriculum materials supported a teacher and her students learning scientific ideas as well as practices which include: asking questions, collecting data, making descriptions of observations and date using particular representational practices, finding patterns in the data, and the development of scientific reasoning. Findings suggest that students began to engage in scientific reasoning when the instructional scaffolds were included in materials. In contrast, when another curriculum material was used, the students did not engage as much scientific reasoning. Similarly, through experiences with the designed materials, the teacher showed changes in terms of her thinking about the kinds of support that students needed in order to develop understandings and learn to engage in scientific practices.