Engaging in Newton’s Laws: Grade 8 Experiment

By Kim Ariail

One of the most fantastic, gratifying parts of my job is the opportunity to go into different classes and coteach. This allows me to engage and observe the students in different subjects and classroom circumstances. It also allows me to see various aspects of academia from different perspectives. 

In January,  I was able to discern how the Grade 8 demonstrated their understanding of Newton’s 1st law and Grade 7 upcycled a piece of trash. 

“According to Newton’s first law, until a force pushes or pulls it, an object at rest (like the egg lying on the paper toilet roll) should remain that way (my hand striking the plastic top). It is referred to as the state of rest as inertia. The egg sat where it was for a very brief amount of time, floating over the cup until I knocked the paper toilet roll out from under the egg. Then another power, gravity, took over and directly pulled the egg into the cup.” Zoe

See also: Grade 4’s Journey into the World of Body Systems

Not only was it amusing and enlighting to watch their experiments and presentations, the students interactions with their task allowed them to reflect and learn in a different way. For them to connect with physical material through hands-on learning allowed them to problem-solve and aid their learning process with trial and error. 

Here are some of their comments.

Did you have any challenges?What would you do differently next time?
I had some challenges when putting the plastic bottle’s cap into the toothpaste tube.I think I should’ve made the pencil case with more decoration, or more functions.
Not really, but editing the commercial was a real challenge.Maybe I should’ve asked for my friend for how to edit the commercial sooner.
I also enjoyed creating and building up my design but I also faced challenges such as making a commercial.Next time when I rebuild my design, I would like to use different  clothing because I had difficulties cutting the cloth.
I had a couple of issues with my original project because it was hard to execute so midway through the construction of my project.I would research more into a project next time because this project was hard. 

As we continue with on-line learning, we hope to engage the students with more hands-on learning experiences. A chance to step away from their device and engage with others and objects.

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