Lesson 16 — Balanced and Unbalanced Forces (Assessment)

Physical sciences, summative task. Students demonstrate their understanding of forces by analysing everyday situations: drawing labelled force arrows (with arrow size showing the size of the force), classifying forces as balanced or unbalanced and justifying this from the object's movement, and identifying whether each force is a contact force (like friction) or a force that acts at a distance (like magnetism or gravity). This is the strand's summative assessment, modelled on the SCSA Year 4 exemplar balanced-and-unbalanced-forces task. A shared tug-of-war moment re-anchors the balanced/unbalanced idea. Includes a slide deck reviewing the big ideas and the Balanced and Unbalanced Forces assessment task sheet.