You Will Need
Additional Resources
- Wires
- Cells (batteries)
- Crocodile clips
- Bulbs
- Buzzers
- Motors
- Materials for testing, e.g. clay, ruler, tin foil, rubber, cork, feather, buttons
Weblinks
Conductor quiz for the plenary from educationquizzes.com
Good conductor, bad conductor?
Science Year 4
This unit is part of
Year 4 Science It's Electric
Objectives
Conduct your own experiment, testing different materials to see whether or not they complete your circuits.
Science Objectives
i) Recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit and associate this with whether or not a lamp lights in a simple series circuit.
ii) Recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.
Working Scientifically
- Ask relevant questions and use different types of scientific enquiries to answer them.
- Set up simple practical enquiries and comparative and fair tests.
- Record findings using simple scientific language, drawings, labelled diagrams, keys, bar charts, and tables.
- Report on findings from enquiries, including oral and written explanations, displays or presentations of results and conclusions.
- Use results to draw simple conclusions, make predictions for new values, suggest improvements and raise further questions.
Extended Writing Opportunities
Recount: Write a detailed recount, for Young Scientist of the Year competition, of your first-hand experience of testing a range of materials; include what you did, the results and your conclusions.
Lesson Planning
Teaching
- Open and close a circuit with a switch and predict and test which other materials could be used to conduct electricity.
- Record findings and draw conclusions about materials used to make electrical circuits, and materials used to keep us safe from electrical circuits.
Activities
- Introduce a switch to their circuit and understand that a break in the circuit will stop the flow of electricity.
- Work together to test a range of materials and record their findings in a simple chart.
- Predict and explain which materials are good conductors of electricity, and which are not.
Investigation - problem solving and exploring
Identify electrical components and explore electrical circuits
Vocabulary
Electricity, circuit, switch, battery, plug, mains, appliance, device, wire, crocodile clip, bulb, buzzer, connection, power, cell, energy, flow, current, conductor, insulator