When it comes to writing electricity lesson plans, I cringe. I don’t love teaching about electricity mainly because I think it’s a hard topic for kids to understand. But I am able to (hopefully) bring it down to their level by providing them with some awesome activities to complete. This blog post will give you my five favorite tips that I use when I am planning for the electricity unit.
Electricity Lesson Plans
Tip # 1
Started off by making the lessons engaging. I love to give my students a copper wire, a mini light bulb, and a D battery. I don’t tell them anything but light the lightbulb up. The students will literally look at me like what are you crazy? They have no idea how to do this however it does allow them to become engaged into understand the positive and negative of a battery. It also allows students to want to learn about electricity.
Tip # 2
Tip number two is teach about MELTS. The reason why I say teach this is because the students will understand the difference between the different types of energy by using melts. It allows the students to think of mechanical energy, electrical energy, light energy, thermal energy, and sound energy. The students will actually remember the lesson because of the acronym melts. Try not to skip this and actually teach this part because it is important for their understanding.
Tip # 3
Kids don’t have a great handle on their drawing skills or the handwriting all the time. If you were to provide them with science notes this would help like crazy. You can actually have a student and draw a close in open circuit. They can draw the wires to the circuits. Pre-created notes are amazing.
Tip # 4
This is always one of my favorite activities to do… And it’s snap circuits. OK so what I do is a put all the pieces of a snap circuit underneath the document camera. Then I randomly calling a student and ask them to tell me where to put one of the pieces. They only get one choice. If they’re wrong they’re wrong- if they’re right then they help their team. The team is the class. The students add more pieces to our snap circuit to make a closed circuit. Once we get that closed circuit we try to light it up to see if it works. If it doesn’t light up then we have to try and remove things or change things. This activity is 100% engagement.
These tips allow me to have a successful unit. Like I said… writing electricity lesson plans makes me cringe. However these for tips make it a little bit easier for me. If you were looking for lesson plans already made for you check out the Power of Science Energy unit by clicking here! Everything that I have created about energy and electricity is right here for you!
