Year 5 Class Assembly: Push, Pull, Twist – Forces & their Effects

In Year 5’s interactive Class Assembly this term, they shared the amazing things they have been learning in Science about Forces. The Infants and Juniors listened carefully, thanks in part to a gentle warning at the start that there would be a quiz at the end! Year 5 pupils held up cards that identified the three types of force – Push, Pull and Twist and suggested that doors and locks are a good example of where we find these forces at work in everyday life. The children were then asked to put their hands up with any of their own examples of these forces.

After an engaging introduction, pupils took it in turn to share what they had learned about the effects of some of these forces, such as Friction, a resistive force that acts like a push force on moving objects. The children were encouraged to experience one of the effects of friction for themselves, by looking at the uneven texture of their palms then rubbing them together to feel the heat this generates. They held up a picture of a racing car whose brakes were red hot from the brake discs slowing the vehicle down, another effect of Friction.

Year 5 explained more about Air Resistance. Pupils showed how, in a lesson in the playground, they had tried to run with a large piece of cardboard in front of them and felt how the air resistance slowed them down. They also had conducted an experiment with different shaped handmade parachutes, to work out which shape caused the most and least air resistance: a hexagon, square and circle fell at similar speeds but the rectangle always fell fastest.

The final force the class told about was Buoyant Force, which acts on any object that enters water. To demonstrate this, pupils held up a line of wool to represent the water surface line and used light and heavy balls to illustrate how, for heavier objects, the downward pull of gravity is much bigger than the buoyant force pushing against it and the opposite is true for lighter objects, like a beachball, which causes it to float.

As promised, the Infants and Juniors enjoyed a short quiz at the end of the assembly, showing all that they had learned. Proving his own habit of attentive listening, Mr Fletcher added a quick summary, with an affirmative nod from the Year 5 teacher Mr Dalton to confirm that the knowledge had successfully ‘stuck’.

Well done to Year 5 for a thoroughly absorbing and informative Class Assembly!