Rockets teaching sequence – unit plan
Rocket science includes ideas of forces and motion, how rockets work and some of the challenges for those wanting to make rockets go faster and higher. This teaching sequence introduces students to the science concepts of thrust and mass.
The learning outcomes of this teacher resource are that students will begin to understand that:
a rocket will launch and keep speeding up as long as the force pushing it upwards is greater than the forces pulling and pushing it downwards
a rocket produces thrust to start it moving by pushing against the gases inside the rocket
the mass of a rocket is important for two reasons – an object with less mass accelerates more quickly, and an object with less mass has less gravitational force acting on it.
Students will meet these objectives by:
using skateboards to learn that forces come in pairs and that these forces are equal but opposite
designing and launching water bottle rockets
using a simulator to test how mass and thrust affect how high a rocket will travel.
Download the teaching sequence (see below).
Learning about rockets
Teacher Sinead Senek from Sts Peter and Paul School in Lower Hutt explains how she used Science Learning Hub rocket resources to help her class to refine their enquiries into rockets and forces. This learning culminated in the design and testing of their rockets. The unit also offered a powerful context for developing students’ literacy and numeracy.
To think about:
How important is it to let students make mistakes in their investigations?
There is no one way to deliver this topic. How might you adopt this unit plan to best meet the needs of your students?
Related collection
3...2...1...Lift off! is a collection that supports the House of Science 3...2...1...Lift off kit which uses rockets as a context for learning about forces. This collection of resources covers NZC levels 1-4.
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