Force Finders: The Pushes and Pulls Behind Every Move
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning to identify forces as pushes or pulls, and to describe how the size and direction of a force changes the way an object moves.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can explain that a force is a push or a pull exerted by one object on another
- I can describe what forces do: start, stop, speed up, slow down or change the direction of an object
- I can predict how a bigger force, or a force from a new direction, will change an object's motion
The ghost goalkeeper
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
Backyard soccer, Saturday afternoon. You boot the ball across the grass toward the far fence — a certain goal. But halfway there the ball starts slowing down. Slower... slower... and it stops. Completely. Nobody touched it. No wind. No hole in the grass. Something out there grabbed your rolling ball and pulled it up short like a ghost goalkeeper. Here's the strange part: whatever stopped that ball is real, it's a force, and it's touching you RIGHT NOW.