Science is my favorite subject to teach. I know I’ve said that before, but I mean it! There’s something about the continual discovery and inquiry that happens during a science lesson that is second to none, it is hands-on and moves beyond science worksheets. Science experiments are the backbone of my science class, and any experiment or STEM challenge is rooted in the scientific method. It is so important that students understand the steps in the scientific method so that they are ready to conduct scientific inquiries in and out of the classroom.

Experiments are a great way to learn the scientific method without worksheets!

Make Sure to Teach the Steps

This may seem simple, but I start the year with a lesson specifically on “the scientific method”. I walk my students through the steps so that they understand each step of the process. I’ll put the steps of the scientific method on an anchor chart, and write any new vocabulary words on our word wall. We’ll talk through each step:

• Creating a Question - What are we exploring? What question are we trying to answer with this experiment?

• Hypothesis - What do we expect will happen? Is this guess reasonable? What do we already know about this topic? (I do spend quite a bit of time teaching about how to create a reasonable hypothesis, second grade students have a tendency to make wild and outlandish guesses about what will happen in an experiment!)

• Procedure - What steps will we take to conduct the experiment? We need to document absolutely everything that we do so we can do it again later if we need to. This is also a great time for a mini-lesson on how to complete a scientific diagram with labels.

• Results - What happened when we completed our experiment? What did we observe?

• Conclusions - What do we know now? Was our hypothesis right? This is the place where we give a summary of how the experiment went and let other scientists (our peers!) know what we might do differently next time!

Complete a Science Experiment Together

We used this Scientific Method worksheet flip book to record our steps as we complete the experiment

To really help students to understand the steps in the scientific method, I like to do (at least) one experiment altogether, using the same recording form, following the same procedure, recording the same information. It’s all exactly the same. You get it. It’s not that I don’t want students to think for themselves, but I find it helps to build a foundation for success later on if we’ve done one perfectly together. (I use this technique a lot, actually. It’s how I set my students up for success in our Inquiry Crime Scenes as well.)

Let Students Find Their Own Experiment

Now that students are comfortable with the steps and vocabulary in the scientific method, and they’ve done an experiment together with me, it’s time for them to do one on their own. This is a great chance for a little student-led learning. Within reason, I’ll let students find their own area of interest, devise their own hypothesis, and we’ll work together to gather the materials to complete the experiment! Sharing the results is a great chance to practice presentation skills and bring in a few speaking and listening standards to our science lesson.

“Teaching the Scientific Method in Third Grade”. Two students hold up science experiment supplies.

Teaching about force and motion is one of the most fun parts of our science curriculum! The whole topic naturally lends itself to so many hands-on experiments and challenges that it’s easy to keep kids in second and third grade engaged and having fun. These Science lessons are easily some of my favorite ones we do all year.

When we cover force and motion in elementary (second, third, and fourth grades) we do a little bit of everything: push forces, pull forces, friction, static electricity, magnetic force, air resistance, and more!

The Easy Way to Teach About Force and Motion

Everything you need to teach about forces and motion in 2nd and 3rd grades. Nonfiction reading, STEM Challenges, Experiments, Worksheets and scripted instructions.

Print and teach. It’s really that easy.

check out the unit

Start With Force and Motion Vocabulary

Although I am a big believer in student-led learning, I always start my units with teacher-led information. When I scaffold learning this way (by front-loading the teaching) I'm giving my students a solid foundation for the hands-on experiences that are coming later on. For force and motion, we start with learning all of the basic vocabulary. I'll set up a word wall, and we'll use simple non-fiction readers to help to teach unfamiliar concepts. These force and motion worksheets serve an important purpose in our classroom!

Then, when we start getting into group and student-led lessons, my students are being tripped up when they encounter words like "static electricity" or "magnetic force" or "friction" because they have a basic understanding of most of these already.

Helpful Force and Motion Videos

In the past, I've used videos and youtube clips to help students really understand these physics concepts. If you can access YouTube at school, these were great videos to help introduce new vocabulary with visual aids!

This first video introduces the difference between pull forces and push forces.

This video is all about Friction! We used it before our Friction stations to give students a little more background knowledge before some hands-on exploration. (Plus, the host is really engaging!)

Force and Motion STEM Challenges

The Force and Motion unit includes 3 hands-on stem challenges!

I have always been a big fan of STEM challenges. If you haven't done one before (*insert mind-blown emoji) , this is a GREAT place to start. The open-ended nature of these challenges let students be successful as they guess/test scientific theories at an age-appropriate level.

In our force and motion unit, we do a handful of STEM challenges and the Magnet Maze is probably one of my favorites. It's so creative and my students had the best time gathering materials and creating their magnet mazes. When they're complete, we take the time to test each other's mazes. It's a blast. You can grab the worksheets and teacher lesson plans for this STEM challenge below!

Nonfiction Reading About Forces and Motion

One of the best ways to give students scientific background knowledge is nonfiction reading. I firmly believe in integrating science and reading, it’s a great way to set students up for success. When students can access nonfiction about each science topic (at their level) it can level up the engagement.

Force and Motion reading passages and STEM extension

This is a set of paired passages all about force and motion, and using forces in real life. They’re written to be at a third grade level and are also aligned to the CCSS - so you’re meeting two sets of standards at once! This particular resource also includes a STEM challenge that’s all about catapults - the ultimate force and motion tool

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‘Balanced and Unbalanced Forces’ a set of differentiated nonfiction passages

If you JUST need nonfiction reading, I have a set of differentiated passages all about balanced and unbalanced forces. It’s a good place to set the stage and teach students the differences between the two!

Ready to teach the entire Force and Motion unit? I have an entire unit’s worth of lessons, hands-on activities, and experiments that are ready to go! Everything you need to teach all about forces in second and third grade is here and ready. Just print, read, and teach.

Ideas, lessons, and experiments to teach about force and motion in a second or third grade classroom.

I am a big fan of hands-on learning.  There is SO much research suggesting that when students discover things for themselves, rather than have all of the information ‘deposited’ lecture-style, they make genuine lifelong connections. There is no better place to conduct an investigation than outdoors, take a peek at how we used inquiry-based learning to explore the life cycles of plants in our third-grade classroom.

This spring, we are learning about plants through a guided-inquiry unit.  It is guided because I came up with the inquiry questions (true inquiry allows students to come up with their own questions). 

We began by learning some vocabulary and key plant terms.  Then, I posed the question: “How do plants grow and change?”  I put the question on a blank bulletin board, and left room for us to answer as we moved through the unit.

Guided inquiry cards  (Pictured above - included in the whole packet)

Instead of handing them a worksheet with the answers, we began to plant! We planted beans, lettuce, scallions, marigolds, and pansies. Each student cared for an individual bean plant, and tracked its growth, changes, and how they cared for it.  In groups, they took turns being ‘gardeners’ for our group outdoor garden. 

There were so many great AH-HA moments as we used our hands-on garden as the focal point for our learning, and I think we learned more from our mistakes than successes!  My students knew the concept of photosynthesis, but only truly understood the importance of green leaves when their plants were munched by local deer!

We finally figured out why plants need sunlight after our blinds were accidentally closed over the weekend and our plants sat in the dark for 72 hours. 

We tracked the changes on our plants, and marveled at how resilient our bean plants were! 

We could not believe at how our teeny-tiny seeds turned into edible pieces of lettuce!

I cannot tell you how many parents have sent me e-mails or stopped in to let me know that they now have small gardens in their houses/apartments that are being tended to by my third graders.  It makes me smile to think that what we are learning in the classroom is already turning into out-of-school continued education! 

I’ve gathered together my whole unit into a ready-to-go packet that you can pick up on Teachers Pay Teachers.   It has everything you need: vocabulary, life cycle worksheets, inquiry questions, student notebooks, and two experiments. 

Check it out here:  ALL ABOUT PLANTS, inquiry-based science

If you try it out, let me know what you think!  Have your kiddos discovered their “green thumb”? 

- Rachel