Lighting Up the Classroom!

November 19, 2013 | Posted in: Class Updates

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Last week, we wrapped up our first science unit of fourth grade.  Students in our class and Mrs. Castle’s class teammed up to learn about electricity.  Because we focus so much on the steps in the inquiry process (Ask your fourth grader about this!), we begin by reviewing a science topic from third grade – magnets.  This helped us to learn the four parts of scientific inquiry, and it gave us a valuable starting point, since there are a lot of similarities between magnets and electricity. (Again, ask your kid!)  In our core electricity unit, we focused on components of electrical circuits (sources, loads, and paths) and different kinds of circuits (simple, series, parallel, and combination circuits).  We learned about conductors and insulators.

We also talked a lot about how these concepts have a tremendous real-word application.  Besides creating circuits to actually see light bulbs illuminate, we discussed how the past two years’ October storms caused the widespread power outages, how electricity is transmitted to homes, and how lightning “works” in nature, and much more.

We ended the unit by creating flashlights (that you’ve hopefully seen) that were made with batteries, bulbs, soda cans, and a short piece of wire.  These series circuits integrated all components of the science unit, and the kids seemed really excited to end the unit with this project.

Ask your kids what they learned during this unit and what they enjoyed most!  I always have a fun time teaching this unit, and I hope the kids had a fun time learning in science!