Newton's Laws Reciprocal Learning Activity

This reciprocal learning activity gives students the opportunity to practice demonstrating and calculating how unbalanced forces cause the motion of an object to change, determining the net force in a force diagram, describing applications of Newton's three laws of motion, identifying the action and reaction force, and calculating force, mass, and acceleration.

What is the Reciprocal Learning Strategy?
Reciprocal Learning is a student-pairing strategy designed with the principles of effective coaching in mind. Each pair of students forms a learning partnership committed to helping each other reach a particular learning goal. Each student plays two roles: as the player, each student works to complete an activity or solve a problem while “thinking out loud”; as a coach, each student observes the player’s work and listens to the player’s thinking while providing praise, feedback, and clues that help the player complete the activity. Because of these dual-roles, the power of learning is effectively doubled.

In this activity, each player is given 14 unique problems to solve as their coach guides, encourages, and provides support when needed. After these 14 problems are completed (and correct), the students switch roles and the second player solves 14 different problems as the other player coaches.

To see a quick overview of this teaching strategy,

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