Why Newton Teaches Forces First, Then Energy, Then Motion

There's a quiet curriculum question that almost nobody asks: in what order should you teach KS3 physics?

It's quiet because most schools just follow their exam board's scheme of work. The schemes differ. AQA tends to lead with energy. OCR likes to start with cells (which is biology). Edexcel sometimes opens with space (motivating, but completely unanchored). None of them seem to ask the more basic question: which topic does the student have the most existing intuition for, and how should the others build on it?

This article is the case for one specific sequence, which Newton runs:

1. Forces first — because you can feel them.
2. Energy second — because once forces are in, energy is the natural follow-up.
3. Motion third — because motion at KS3 is heavily mathematical and needs the other two underneath it.

The other KS3 topics — electricity, magnetism, waves, sound, light, space — sit on top of these three. Get the foundation in the right order and the rest is cheap. Get the foundation in the wrong order and the student spends three years doing calculations without intuition.

Why forces first

Forces are the topic where a Year 7 student has the most working intuition before you teach anything. They've pushed things. They've felt friction (ever tried to drag a sofa?). They've felt their weight (ever stood up after a big meal?). They've felt air resistance (ever stuck a hand out of a car window?).

That makes forces the easiest topic to ground concretely — which is exactly what Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) progression needs. CPA, going back to Jerome Bruner in the 1960s, says you learn an abstract concept best when you've first experienced it physically, then represented it visually, then formalised it mathematically.

Forces are CPA-friendly out of the box:

• Concrete: "Push this book across the table. Feel the resistance — that's friction."
• Pictorial: "Now let's draw arrows for every force on the book — push, friction, weight, normal force."
• Abstract: "If the push is 10 N and friction is 8 N, what's the net force? Newton's second law gives acceleration."

By Year 8, a student who's gone through forces in this order has a working model — forces come in pairs, they can be balanced or unbalanced, unbalanced forces produce acceleration. That model is doing a lot of work in everything that comes after.

Why energy second

Energy is harder to start with because you can't see or feel energy directly. But it does build naturally on top of forces. Once a student understands a force can move an object, the next question is where does the moving come from? That's energy. Newton teaches energy via stories of transfer, drilling one core principle: energy is conserved — it moves between stores and forms but isn't created or destroyed. Battery → bulb (chemical to light + heat). Food → muscle (chemical to kinetic + heat). Fuel → engine (chemical to kinetic + heat + sound). By the end of energy, students have a robust transfer intuition, the basic stores (kinetic, gravitational, chemical, thermal, elastic), and the first real reckoning with units — joules, watts, and the difference between energy and power.

Why motion third

Motion at KS3 is the most mathematically loaded of the three foundational topics. By Year 8, the curriculum expects students to handle:

• Speed = distance / time, with units m/s.
• Distance-time graphs, including reading gradients.
• Speed-time graphs (in Year 9 mostly).
• Acceleration = change in speed / time, with units m/s².

This is a lot of formula work, unit work, and graph work for a topic that, taught first, has no intuitive foundation. A student who learns "speed = distance over time" before they've learnt anything about forces ends up doing arithmetic on a topic they don't physically understand. They'll get the calculations right and freeze on the explanation: "Why did the car slow down? Hmm. The speed went down. Why? Erm."

With forces in place, motion explains itself:

• The car slows down because friction is acting in the opposite direction to motion.
• Acceleration is just what happens when forces are unbalanced.
• Terminal velocity is just the moment when air resistance equals weight.

Now the maths is in service to a physical story, not floating on its own.

A worked sequencing example: terminal velocity

Terminal velocity is the canonical KS3 question that tests whether the sequencing worked. It comes up in Year 8 or 9 depending on scheme.

A skydiver falls. At first, gravity (weight) pulls them down — but as they speed up, air resistance increases. Eventually air resistance equals weight, the net force is zero, and the skydiver stops accelerating. They've hit terminal velocity.

Now look at what a student needs to answer a question on this:

• From forces: Understand that balanced forces mean no acceleration. (Foundation.)
• From forces: Understand that air resistance opposes motion and increases with speed. (Built on forces.)
• From energy: Understand the kinetic energy is no longer increasing once acceleration stops. (Built on energy.)
• From motion: Read a speed-time graph; calculate the velocity. (Built on motion.)

A student who learnt forces first, energy second, motion third has all four. A student who learnt motion first has the graph and the calculation but not the why — and the why is where the marks live.

What this looks like across three years

The Newton sequence across KS3 looks roughly like this:

Schools vary; Newton adapts to whatever the student's school is actually doing. But if the student is on aitutors.me with no school-side sequencing pressure, this is the order.

What happens when the sequence is wrong

I have seen this in my own household. A scheme that led with motion-as-speed-distance-time in Year 7 produced a child who could calculate speeds in her sleep and could not explain why a ball thrown up in the air slows down on the way up. She'd never been taught about gravity as a force, so the deceleration had no cause in her model.

It took two Newton sessions with the forces foundation to repair this. After: "the ball slows down on the way up because gravity is pulling it back down — it's decelerating because there's a net downward force." Now the motion sums made sense.

The general failure mode: teach maths before the physics, and you produce students who can pass quizzes by formula-matching but cannot answer explanation questions. That's a Grade 5 problem at GCSE.

How Newton sequences a single session

The sequencing applies at the session level too. Inside 25 minutes, Newton runs the same CPA progression: 3–5 minutes concrete (push this book — what slows it down?), 5–10 minutes pictorial (force arrows, energy transfer chains, motion graphs), 10–15 minutes abstract (calculations, rearranging, units). Skip the concrete and the diagram lands without context. Skip the pictorial and the formula has no visual anchor.

Exceptions to the sequence

Magnetism doesn't need forces/energy/motion as a prerequisite — teach it any time. Density is a property not a process; Newton slots it between forces and energy. Pressure needs forces in place (pressure = force ÷ area), so it comes after forces. Otherwise the order is robust: forces → energy → motion → everything else.

Why this matters at GCSE

GCSE Physics raises the stakes on every topic. Motion adds suvat and projectiles. Energy adds quantitative work and efficiency. Forces adds Newton's three laws and momentum. A student arriving with the KS3 foundation finds GCSE expansive — the model just stretches. A student arriving motion-first arrives with a tangle of formulas and a missing causal layer; GCSE just adds more formulas on top. That's the long game Newton is playing.

FAQ

Doesn't the national curriculum already specify an order?

Not really. The KS3 programme of study lists what must be covered across Years 7–9 but is broadly silent on sequencing. Schools follow exam-board schemes which differ. Newton's sequence is one defensible reading — sequenced for learnability.

If my child's school teaches in a different order, will Newton confuse them?

No. Newton always anchors a session in what the student's school is currently covering. He'll bring in supporting context proactively so the student isn't doing maths on a topic with no intuition under it.

Why is motion 'mathematical' compared to forces and energy?

Because by Year 8, motion is treated through speed = distance/time, with rearranging formulas, units, and graphs. Forces are largely qualitative at KS3 — arrows and balance. Motion is where maths becomes unavoidable.

What's Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract?

Three-stage progression: physical experience, then diagram, then equation. Skipping stages produces students who can do the maths without understanding the physics.

Related reading

• Meet Professor Newton: KS3 physics that makes you predict first
• Predict-Observe-Explain: the framework Newton runs
• The Show Your Working protocol behind the faculty

Jason runs aitutors.me. His own KS3 physics teacher started with motion. It took until A-Level for forces to make sense. Updated 21 May 2026.