A Force and Motion Poster for Your Classroom

Once your students have an understanding of the concept of a force (a push or pull that makes an object move or change direction), they’ll be ready to explore the ways in which balanced and unbalanced forces influence objects and their motion.

This informative poster has been designed by our teacher team to teach your students some key facts about balanced and unbalanced forces. These include:

• A force is a push or pull that has strength and direction.
• Balanced forces mean that objects remain at rest and there is no change in motion.
• Unbalanced forces mean that objects speed up and there is a change in motion.

This force and motion anchor chart downloads as a full-colour or black-and-white PDF or editable Google Slides file. It will make a great addition to your classroom bulletin board during your exploration of balanced and unbalanced forces.

Use This Force and Motion Poster in Your Science Lessons

While this balanced and unbalanced forces poster makes a great reference when it comes to helping your students remember key facts about this physics concept, it can be used in other ways during your science lessons on forces. Here is one suggestion from our teacher team:

Send your students outside with a device that enables them to take photographs. Have the students take pictures of objects where the forces are balanced (at rest) and objects where the forces are unbalanced (speeding up). In some cases, the students could even create their own scenarios to capture, e.g. kicking a ball to show the change in motion. These images could then be printed out and displayed around the poster as examples of balanced and unbalanced forces at work in the real world. Not only will students love this student-centred outdoor activity, but you’ll end up with a great display of their learning on your classroom wall!

Download This Forces Poster for Your Classroom

Use the dropdown menu on the Download button to choose your preferred file format.

You may wish to enlarge this poster to enhance readability for display purposes.

This resource was created by David Steffes, a Teach Starter collaborator.

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