Grade 4
NSTA EQuIP Reviews
The EQuIP Rubric for Science provides criteria by which to measure how well lessons and units are designed for the NGSS. This page houses NSTAs EQuIP Rubric Reports for Grade 4. Learn more about the review process.
4.1 Energy Transfer: Collisions
Why does an object's motion change?
Developer | Score | Report | Awarded |
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OpenSciEd | E: Example of | Download Report (PDF) | ![]() |
Unit Summary
What sports and games do you like to play? What objects move in those games? How do they change motion? In this unit, students experience and observe what happens to a soccer ball as they pass it back and forth to a partner at different distances and then explore other games. The unit supports students in developing foundational ideas about energy, its relationship to changes in motion and shape, and to find evidence that energy has been transferred between two objects when they collide. Through a series of investigations, students understand that contact forces between two colliding objects (e.g., a foot and a soccer ball or a ball and a surface) transfer energy from one object to the other, and that increasingly bigger kicks (stronger forces) cause the ball to travel farther and with more speed. Students also investigate how energy transfer occurs when a ball or other moving object slows down as it transfers energy to the surface it is moving on, how energy transfers as sound and/or heat to the surroundings in addition to changing motion and shape.