Patterns of Forces and Motion Lesson Plan (TEKS 4.7): A Complete 5E Lesson for Investigating Gravity, Friction, and Magnetism

Chris Kesler · 10 min read

If I were teaching TEKS 4.7 to a room of 4th graders, the first thing I'd do is roll a pencil across the floor and ask, "Why did it stop?" Watch the hands shoot up. "It ran out of energy." "It hit the carpet." "It got tired." Nobody says friction yet, and that's perfect. Then I'd hand each table a magnet and a tray of stuff (paperclip, penny, eraser, soda can tab, washer) and say, "Sort the ones that stick from the ones that don't." No vocabulary slide. No definition. Just kids, objects, and a question.

The trap with 4.7 is teaching it like a vocabulary unit. Gravity, friction, magnetism, attract, repel, contact, distance. Eight big words on a slide, a fill-in-the-blank handout, a quiz on Friday. Kids can repeat the definitions all week and still freeze when you ask, "Why doesn't the soda can stick to your magnet?" The verb in the standard isn't define. It's plan and conduct descriptive investigations. That means kids design a test, run it, and describe the pattern they see. They have to do the science, not just know about it.

That's the whole reason behind this 5E lesson for TEKS 4.7. Kids predict, test, observe, and record a pattern for every force in the standard before they ever see a definition. By the time the Explain phase rolls around, they already know what friction looks like because they watched their own pencil slow down. They already know magnetism works at a distance because they pulled a paperclip across the desk without touching it.

⏱ 8 class periods 📓 4th Grade Physical Science 🧪 TEKS 4.7 🎯 Differentiated for D + M 💻 Print or Digital

Inside the Patterns of Forces 5E Lesson

The 5E instructional model walks students through five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It flips the traditional lecture-first sequence on its head. Students explore a concept hands-on before you ever explain it, which means by the time you do explain it, they have something to hook the vocabulary onto.

I switched to the 5E model years ago and stopped going back. Kids retain more, ask better questions, and stop staring at me waiting to be told the answer. The Patterns of Forces 5E Lesson is built on this framework from start to finish. Here's how it plays out across the five phases.

🎯 Engage

Day one is a teacher-led hook that gets every kid investigating forces before any vocabulary shows up on the board. Each student (or small group) gets a tray of objects, a magnet, and a student observation sheet. The directions walk them through a quick push-and-pull warmup (opening a door, leaning on a wall, pulling a book toward themselves), then a prediction-and-test cycle with the magnet, and a quick gravity demo with a dropped object.

By the end of the period, kids have predicted, tested, and recorded results for at least three different force interactions. A few brave ones have already used words like "pulls," "sticks," "slows down," or "falls." Nobody has heard the official terms yet, and that's the point. They're walking into the rest of the unit with a working sense of what a force is and the idea that you can spot a pattern by running the same test more than once.

What's included in the Engage:

Teacher directions for the push, pull, and magnet hook
Printable student observation sheet
Answer key for the discussion questions
Four learning objective slides (standard verbatim, "I CAN...", "WE WILL...", and an essential question slide)
An illustrated Forces Word Wall in English and Spanish covering the full unit vocabulary

🔬 Explore

The Patterns of Forces Station Lab is the heart of the Explore phase. Students rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) over one class period. The Station Lab is split into four input stations (where kids take in new information) and four output stations (where they show what they learned).

The four input stations:

🎬 Watch It! — Students watch a short video on the patterns of gravity, friction, and magnetism and answer guided questions.
📖 Read It! — A one-page reading passage on forces in contact and at a distance at two differentiated levels, with a Spanish version included.
🔬 Explore It! — The hands-on testing station where students roll objects across different surfaces to test friction, drop objects to observe gravity, and pull paperclips with a magnet through paper to see force at a distance.
💻 Research It! — Reference cards with force definitions, examples of contact vs. non-contact forces, and pattern diagrams for each force.

The four output stations:

📋 Organize It! — A card sort where students place force examples under gravity, friction, or magnetism, and then under contact or at a distance.
🎨 Illustrate It! — Students draw a graphic organizer showing each force with a picture, an example, and a label of contact or at a distance.
✍️ Write It! — Three open-ended questions in complete sentences where kids describe the pattern they would see if they repeated their force test five times in a row.
📝 Assess It! — A short formative check with multiple choice and a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary paragraph.

Print and digital versions are both included. If you want the full breakdown of what happens at every single station, what students produce, and how to set it up, that's in our dedicated Station Lab post.

→ Read the full Patterns of Forces Station Lab walkthrough 8 stations, materials list, teacher tips

The Station Lab is included in the full 5E lesson. You don't need to buy it separately if you're getting the whole unit.

📚 Explain

Here's the real payoff of doing the Engage and Explore before the Explain: by the time kids hit this phase, they've already rolled pencils across the floor, tested paperclips with magnets, and watched a cup of water fall toward the ground. They have a working understanding before you ever start naming things. The discussions get deeper, the questions get sharper, and you spend less time defining and more time pushing their thinking.

The Patterns of Forces Presentation walks 4th graders through the full scope of TEKS 4.7, one force at a time. The deck opens with a quick reset on what a force is (a push or a pull on an object) and introduces the idea that forces can cause objects to speed up, slow down, change direction, or stay in one place. From there the deck zooms in on the three named forces in the standard: friction, magnetism, and gravity.

Students learn that friction is a force that acts in the opposite direction of an object's motion. It slows things down or stops them when they're touching another object. Friction is what lets shoes grip the floor, brakes stop a bike, and a pencil leave a mark on paper. The deck has kids roll a pencil across the floor, watch it stop, and describe the pattern: the rougher the surface, the faster the stop.

Then the lesson moves into magnetism, the force that attracts or repels magnetic material. Kids learn that magnets have a north pole and a south pole, that opposite poles attract and similar poles repel, and that magnetism works both in contact (the paperclip sticks to the magnet) and at a distance (a magnet pulls a paperclip through a piece of paper without touching it). The pattern they see: the closer the magnet, the stronger the pull.

Finally the deck covers gravity, a force that pulls objects toward each other. On Earth, gravity is the force that pulls everything down toward the ground. A juggler's ball comes back down. A dropped pencil falls. Even a cup of water with a hole in the bottom stops leaking the moment the cup is dropped, because the cup and the water are falling together at the same rate. Gravity is a force at a distance. Earth doesn't need to touch you to pull you down.

What makes the Patterns of Forces Presentation different from a typical force-and-motion slideshow is that kids are doing something on almost every single slide. It's not a lecture deck. It's a participation deck. "Your answer:" prompts appear on most slides, Brain Breaks reset attention every few slides, Quick Action INB tasks (sorting examples of forces, matching contact vs. distance, predicting the pattern of a dropped object) show up throughout, and Think About It prompts push deeper into bigger ideas like designing a magnet science fair project and predicting what would happen if friction or gravity disappeared for a day. The deck closes with a Check for Understanding tied back to the Essential Questions: What are descriptive investigations? How do patterns of gravity, friction, and magnetism affect objects?

The Explain materials in this product include:

An editable 29-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (Dependent and Modified), works in PowerPoint or Google Slides
A guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout that mirrors the Presentation, with answer key
A Paper Interactive Notebook (English and Spanish) students cut, fold, and glue into their notebooks
A Digital Interactive Notebook at both levels with answer keys, for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom

The Explain runs across two class periods. The built-in Think About It prompts are where the real discussion happens, so let those breathe.

🛠️ Elaborate

The Elaborate phase is where students stretch what they learned about patterns of forces and put it into a project of their choosing. In this 4th grade physical science lesson, that's a Student Choice Project board with six different project options plus a "design your own" pathway.

Students might design a friction investigation that tests how far a toy car rolls across three different surfaces, build a magnet maze where a paperclip is moved through a paper maze using a magnet from below, or write and perform a short skit where two characters argue about whether forces can work without touching. There are options for kids who love to write, kids who love to draw, kids who love to build, and kids who love to perform. Whatever the project, the point is the same: students apply patterns of forces to a real-world investigation instead of a worksheet.

Choice is the whole point. By letting students pick how they show their thinking, you get more authentic work for TEKS 4.7 and you actually get to see what they understand about gravity, friction, and magnetism in contact or at a distance.

The rubric (the part teachers actually want)

Every project, no matter which option a student picks, is graded on the same 100-point rubric. Five categories at 20 points each:

Vocabulary (20 pts) — At least four words from the lesson are used in context.
Concepts (20 pts) — At least two key concepts from the lesson are referenced.
Presentation (20 pts) — The project grabs attention and is well-organized.
Clarity (20 pts) — Easy to understand. Free of typos.
Accuracy (20 pts) — Drawings and models are accurate. The science is right.

The rubric uses a minus / check / plus shorthand on every row so you can grade a stack of projects quickly without re-reading every criterion.

Two differentiated versions in one file

The standard version is for students ready for independent application of force investigations. The Reinforcement version is for students who need additional vocabulary or concept support. Three of the six options are swapped for projects with a tighter vocabulary tie-in, and "design your own" is replaced with "collaborate with the teacher" so kids aren't pitching cold.

✅ Evaluate

The Evaluate phase wraps the unit with a formal assessment. It's not all bubble-in. Several questions hand students a picture of a force interaction and ask them to identify the force being shown and whether it's working in contact or at a distance.

The full assessment has 12 questions across five formats:

Multiple choice (4 questions) covering force vocabulary, examples of each force, and the difference between contact and non-contact forces
Hotspot / visual (2 questions) where students circle the image that shows a target force and describe how they know
Multiselect (2 questions) where students pick all forces that act on a given object
Short answer (2 questions) on the pattern a student would see if they repeated a force test multiple times
Multipart scenario (2 questions) with a classroom investigation where kids identify the force being tested, predict the pattern, and explain the result

A modified version is included for students who need additional support. Fewer multiple-choice distractors and sentence-starter scaffolds on the short-answer items.

If you've taught all five phases, this assessment shouldn't surprise anyone. It's a chance for kids to show you they get it.

How everything fits together

If you want the whole experience (Engage hook, the Station Lab as the Explore, the Explain day with Presentation and interactive notebook, the Student Choice Elaborate, and the Evaluate assessment all in one download), that's the Patterns of Forces Complete 5E Science Lesson.

If you only need the one-day hands-on activity, the Station Lab works as a standalone. Most teachers buy the full 5E because the Station Lab works harder when it's bookended by a strong Engage and a follow-up Explain. But both are honest options.

Two options

Patterns of Forces Complete 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson — ~10 class periods $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Just the Station Lab — 1–2 class periods $7.20 Get the Station Lab

What you need to teach Patterns of Forces (TEKS 4.7)

Materials beyond what's in the download:

Bar or horseshoe magnets for the Engage and the magnetism station (one per group)
A tray of objects for magnet testing (paperclip, penny, eraser, soda can tab, steel washer, plastic spoon)
Pencils and assorted small objects for the friction rolling tests
Different surface samples for friction (a piece of carpet, sandpaper, smooth cardboard, a desk surface)
A small plastic cup with a hole punched in the bottom for the gravity drop demo
Paper clips and a sheet of paper for the magnet-at-a-distance test
Pencils, colored pencils or markers, and printed student pages
A device with internet for the Watch It! station and the slide deck

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 4.7 — Plan and conduct descriptive investigations to explore the patterns of forces such as gravity, friction, or magnetism in contact or at a distance on an object. See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 4th grade science

Time: About 10 class periods of 45 minutes each, done with fidelity. The product also ships with a compressed sample unit plan if you need to move faster.

Common misconceptions this lesson clears up

"Heavier things fall faster than lighter things"
If air resistance isn't a problem, gravity pulls everything down at the same rate. Drop a heavy textbook and a small eraser from the same height at the same time. They hit the floor together. The only thing that messes this up is air slowing down very light, fluffy things like a feather or a tissue. The pull of gravity itself doesn't care how heavy the object is.
"Friction is bad and we should always try to get rid of it"
Friction stops you from sliding around like you're on ice all the time. When you walk, friction between your shoes and the floor keeps you from falling. When you write, friction between the pencil and the paper makes the line. Friction is what lets cars stop at red lights. Yes, sometimes engineers want less friction (slippery slides, oiled bike chains), but most of the time friction is the helpful force that keeps things in their place.
"Magnets attract anything metal"
Magnets only pull on certain metals: iron, nickel, steel, and a few others. They don't pull on aluminum, copper, or gold. Test it with a paperclip, a soda can, and a penny. The paperclip jumps right up. The soda can and penny don't move. "Metal" and "magnetic" aren't the same thing. You have to test it to know.
"Forces only work when things are touching"
Some forces don't need touch at all. Gravity pulls a falling pencil to the floor without ever touching it. A magnet can attract a paperclip from across a desk without making contact. Forces that work without touch are called "forces at a distance," and they're just as real as a hand pushing a book. The TEKS specifically calls out forces "in contact or at a distance."

What's included in the Patterns of Forces 5E Lesson download

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Patterns of Forces Complete 5E Lesson, you get a single download with the whole unit:

✅ Engage materials — teacher directions, student observation sheet, answer key, four learning objective slides, illustrated Forces Word Wall (English + Spanish)
✅ The full Station Lab — 8 stations + 1 challenge, print and digital, two reading levels, Spanish Read It!
✅ Explain materials — editable 29-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (with built-in Brain Breaks, Quick Action INB tasks, and Think About It prompts), guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout with answer key, Paper Interactive Notebook (English + Spanish), Digital Interactive Notebook at two levels with answer keys
✅ Elaborate (Student Choice Projects) — 6 project options + design-your-own, plus a Reinforcement version with vocabulary-focused alternatives, 5-category rubric included
✅ Summative assessment — full 12-question version and modified version with sentence-starter scaffolds, both with answer keys
✅ Sample unit pacing guide — day-by-day plan for the full 5E lesson

A couple of real-talk tips from running this lesson

1. Pre-test your magnets on every object before the Engage.

The cheap classroom magnets sometimes won't pick up thin foil or weak steel paperclips. If you hand kids a magnet that can't lift a paperclip, you've broken the lesson before it started. Test every object you're including on the morning of the lesson.

2. Run the friction tests on the actual surfaces kids will use.

Carpet, tile, and laminate desks all give totally different results. Decide in advance which surfaces you want kids to compare, and pre-mark a start and stop line so they're rolling the same distance every time. That's how the pattern becomes obvious.

3. Save 10 minutes at the end of the Station Lab day for a class debrief.

Ask: "If you tested gravity on the same object ten times in a row, what pattern would you see?" That five-minute conversation is the bridge to the Explain day and gets kids using the word pattern the way the standard wants them to.

Get the Patterns of Forces 5E Lesson

Buy the full Patterns of Forces 5E Lesson — $13.20

Or if you only need the one-day hands-on Station Lab:

Buy the Patterns of Forces Station Lab — $7.20

(The Station Lab is included in the full 5E Lesson)

Frequently asked questions

Does this cover all of TEKS 4.7?

Yes. The full standard is addressed across all five phases, including all three named forces (gravity, friction, magnetism) and both contact and at-a-distance interactions. The "plan and conduct descriptive investigations" verb is built into the Engage, Explore, and Elaborate phases.

What do my students need to know before this lesson?

That objects can move and that pushing or pulling something changes its motion. That's it. Everything else gets built inside the lesson.

How long does it take to teach?

Done with fidelity, about 8 class periods of 45 minutes each: one day for the Engage hook, two days for the Station Lab, two days for the Presentation and Interactive Notebook, two days for the Student Choice Project, and one day for review and the assessment.

Do I need special supplies?

Just basic classroom items: magnets, paperclips, a few small objects, and a couple of surface samples for friction tests. Most teachers already have all of it.

Does this work for digital classrooms?

Yes. Every component has a digital version. The Station Lab is fully digital-ready (Google Slides), the Presentation works in Google Slides, and the Student Choice Projects can be submitted as videos, slide decks, or written work.

Is this 5E lesson aligned to NGSS too?

It aligns with elementary physical science standards on forces and interactions (3-PS2-1, 3-PS2-3, 3-PS2-4). Built TEKS-first, but the investigation work overlaps heavily.