Test Force Effects in a System Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Designing Force Experiments (TEKS 5.7B)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

Stretch a piece of string across the classroom. Thread a straw on it. Tape an inflated balloon to the straw. Let it go. The balloon zips across the room. Now ask a 5th grader: how far would it go if the balloon were smaller? What if it were bigger? Will it travel the same distance every time? Those questions are the difference between watching something happen and actually testing it. This standard is the year kids stop just observing and start designing experiments that change one thing at a time to see what happens.

That's TEKS 5.7B. It asks 5th graders to design a simple experimental investigation that tests the effect of force on an object. They have to pick one variable to change (the independent variable), one variable to measure (the dependent variable), keep everything else the same (controlled variables), make a hypothesis, run multiple trials, and explain what they found.

The Test Force Effects in a System Station Lab for TEKS 5.7B hands them a balloon, a straw, a string, and tape. They run three rounds, changing only the balloon size each time. By the end, they don't just know what "variable" means; they've actually used one.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 5th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 5.7B 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for designing force experiments

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while kids work through the rotation.

The Test Force Effects in a System Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on variables, hypotheses, trials, and experimental design) and four output stations (where they show what they learned). Here's what's at each one.

📷 Image slot 1 — add screenshot

📷 Image slot 2 — add screenshot

4 input stations: how students learn experimental design

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video introduces force and the basics of testing it. Three questions on the answer sheet check whether students caught the big ideas: what a force is, one example from the video of a way to experiment with force, and three guidelines for setting up an experiment that tests force. Visual learners come alive here because the video shows kids actually doing simple force tests they can replicate in the Explore It! station and at home.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "Test Force Effects in a System" walks students through a stroller-on-a-driveway scenario. Pushing a sibling down the driveway is easy; pushing back up is hard. Why? The passage uses that everyday question to introduce the full vocabulary of experimental design: observation, question, hypothesis, independent variable (the steepness of the hill), dependent variable (how hard it is to push), constants (everything else), procedure, trials. Vocabulary is bolded throughout. Three multiple-choice questions follow, plus a vocabulary section. Comes in two reading levels (Dependent and Modified) plus a Spanish version.

🔬 Explore It! —

This is the heart of the lab and runs in three parts. Students thread a straw onto a string stretched 3 meters across the classroom. They tape an inflated balloon to the straw, release it, and measure how far it travels. They repeat with the same balloon size three times to get a baseline. Then Part 2: smaller balloon, three trials. Part 3: larger balloon, three trials. Five questions identify the independent variable (balloon size), the dependent variable (distance traveled), the controlled variables (string length, straw, tape, height of string), and analyze the results. This is the moment the variable vocabulary stops being abstract and becomes real.

💻 Research It! —

Eight reference cards work students through an already-run experiment so they can practice analysis without doing the setup. A toy car on a ramp gets tested on four surfaces: smooth plastic, carpet, sandpaper, and wood. Data is shown three ways: a description of the procedure, a data table with three trials per surface and an average time, and a bar graph comparing the times. A second card defines the three types of variables. Three questions push students to identify the variables in the car experiment, describe how friction affected the car's motion (carpet was slowest, plastic was fastest), and propose another test they could run to explore how force affects a car.

📷 Featured station deep-dive — add screenshot of the Explore It! task card

4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A two-column card sort matching six experimental design terms to their definitions. Experimental investigation goes with "an experiment in which all parts are held constant except for one." Independent variable goes with "the one variable that is changed and is tested." Dependent variable goes with "the change that occurs; what you are measuring or observing." Constants goes with "the parts of an experiment that are kept the same." Hypothesis goes with "a prediction of the outcome of an experiment." Trials goes with "repeating the exact experiment several times to gather results." Quick to spot-check, and locks the vocabulary down so they can use it across the rest of the year.

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Students design a brand-new experiment from scratch and sketch the setup. They have to pick what they're testing (the effect of some force on the motion of some object), label the independent variable (what they'll change), the dependent variable (what they'll measure), the controlled variables (what stays the same), and write a hypothesis at the bottom. This is the part of the standard that asks them to actually create the kind of investigation 5.7B requires. The drawings are usually creative; you'll see ramps, fans, marbles, rubber bands, and balls all over the place. The key is the labels.

✍️ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences: design an experiment to see if wind affects how far a paper airplane flies (and name the independent and dependent variables), what type of experiment could you design to test the force of gravity, and explain the importance of completing several trials in an experiment. The trials question is the one to watch. Kids who get it can explain that one trial might give a weird result by accident, but if you run three or four trials and average them, you're more likely to see the real pattern.

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph using the five Read It! vocabulary words (constants, independent variable, dependent variable, hypothesis, trials). The multiple choice covers how many variables you can change in a controlled experiment (one), what the dependent variable is in a ramp-and-toy-car experiment (the speed of the car), and what counts as a controlled variable. The paragraph uses a bike-on-different-roads scenario to weave the vocabulary together. If you're grading the lab, this is the easiest station to grade.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: design and write up a full experiment testing a force of their choice (with sketched setup, hypothesis, and procedure), build a four-panel comic strip illustrating friction, gravity, or magnetism in a real-world scenario, create an anchor chart or poster that walks through the steps of an experimental investigation with pictures and short descriptions, or build a board game that uses the Read It! vocabulary words with their own rules and design. Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Test Force Effects in a System unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Test Force Effects in a System Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 5.7B. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Test Force Effects in a System Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 5th-grade teachers grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest with the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on designing force experiments, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Test Force Effects in a System 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Test Force Effects in a System Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach force experiments

Materials beyond what's in the download:

A 3-meter length of string per group for the Explore It! balloon-rocket setup. Kite string or fishing line works best because it's smooth; the straw will glide along it. Yarn drags too much.
Two anchor points per group (chair backs, table legs, doorknobs) to stretch the string between. The string needs to be taut and horizontal.
Plastic drinking straws (one per group). Standard straws work fine; you'll thread the string through them so the balloon can travel along.
Three balloons per group (one for each round). A pack of 50 from the dollar store covers a whole class with extras.
Tape (regular masking tape or Scotch tape) for attaching balloons to straws.
One ruler or measuring tape per group for measuring how far the balloon traveled. A printed paper measuring strip works fine too.
Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! station.
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 5.7B —

Design a descriptive investigation to test the effect of force on an object, such as a push or a pull, gravity, friction, or magnetism.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 5th grade physical science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"An experiment is just doing the same thing once and seeing what happens."
5th graders often confuse "experiment" with "demonstration." If you blow up a balloon and let it go, that's a demo. An experiment is when you change one specific thing (the balloon size) and measure the effect (the distance traveled), then run it again and again. The Explore It! station with three rounds and three trials per round makes this concrete. The Research It! card on the toy car ramp data shows the same thing: three trials per surface, four surfaces, all with an average time at the end. The Write It! question on the importance of trials seals it. By the end, kids know an experiment has structure: change one thing, measure one thing, keep everything else the same, repeat several times.
"You can change as many things as you want in an experiment, as long as you write it all down."
This is the trickiest misconception in 5.7B because it sounds reasonable. If you change three things at once, you can't tell which one actually caused the result. The Read It! passage spells out the rule: change one thing at a time. The Research It! variables card defines independent and controlled variables specifically to drive this home. The Explore It! station forces it on them: in Part 2 they have to use the same string, the same straw, the same height, the same tape, and only change the balloon size. If they accidentally use a different straw, the experiment isn't fair, and the data doesn't tell them anything about balloon size. The Assess It! multiple-choice question ("how many variables can you change?") puts the cap on it: just one.
"If something isn't moving, there are no forces acting on it."
This is a holdover from earlier grades, and 5.7A (equal and unequal forces) hits it first, but it shows up again in 5.7B when kids design their experiments. They'll forget to consider gravity, friction, or magnetism if the object is just sitting there. The Watch It! video and the Read It! stroller-on-a-driveway example both make the point that forces are happening all the time, even when nothing is moving. Friction is the big one for this standard because it's the force the Research It! toy car data is built around. By the time students design their own experiment in Illustrate It!, they know to consider what's pushing back (friction, air resistance, gravity) even when the object hasn't moved yet.

What you get with this Test Force Effects in a System activity

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

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (8 cards covering friction, the toy car experiment setup, a four-surface data table, a bar graph, and a variables-in-an-experiment reference table)
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (six experimental design terms matched to definitions)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching force experiments in your 5th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Pre-string the balloon-rocket tracks before class.

Setting up 6 or 8 separate balloon-rocket tracks during class will eat most of your period. Before students arrive, tie the strings between anchor points (chair backs work great), thread the straws on, and leave the tape and balloons at the station. Groups arrive, attach a balloon, run the test. When they're done, they untape the balloon and leave the string and straw in place for the next group. You go from 10 minutes of setup per group to 30 seconds.

2. Mark a clear starting line.

Distances will be all over the place if there's no agreed-upon start point. Use a small piece of bright tape on the string to mark exactly where every group has to position the balloon before releasing. That way the distance traveled is measured from the same spot every time, no matter who's running the trial. Without the start mark, one group will inflate near one end of the string, another group near the middle, and the data will look random.

Get this Test Force Effects in a System activity

Test Force Effects in a System Station Lab for 5th grade physical science — TEKS 5.7B

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 5.7B cover?

Texas TEKS 5.7B asks 5th grade students to design a descriptive investigation to test the effect of force on an object, such as a push or pull, gravity, friction, or magnetism. Students should be able to identify the independent variable, dependent variable, and controlled variables in their own experiment, write a hypothesis, run multiple trials, and use their data to draw a conclusion about how the force affected the object's motion.

How is this different from 5.7A (Equal and Unequal Forces)?

5.7A is about what equal and unequal forces look like and how they affect motion. 5.7B goes further: now students have to design their own test of a force, not just identify forces in scenarios. The Explore It! balloon-rocket station has them actually running three rounds of three trials each, controlling variables on their own. The standard is the year they shift from observing experiments to designing them.

How long does this Test Force Effects in a System activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! three-part balloon-rocket station is the longest piece because of the three rounds and three trials each, so plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

Do I really need 3 meters of string per group?

3 meters is the recommended length for the balloon-rocket setup so the balloon has enough room to actually slow down and stop before hitting the end. If your classroom is small, 2 meters will still work, but the balloon-size differences are less dramatic. If you have more space (a hallway or open area), 4 or 5 meters makes the data even cleaner. Pick a length that fits your room and use the same length for every group so the distance comparisons are fair.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag digital cards at the Organize It! station and type their responses. The Explore It! balloon-rocket activity is hard to fully digitize, but a virtual physics simulation (like balloon-and-rocket sims on PhET) can stand in if you don't have physical supplies. The Research It! and Illustrate It! stations work especially well in the digital version because the data tables and drawing tools are built in.