You can download the complete lesson materials for Lessons 1-8 via a zipped file:
Evidence in Action All lessons
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Lesson 1: Making circuits
This lesson lays the foundation for pupils understanding a circuit as a whole loop, rather than imagining a sequence of causes and effects between individual components. The lesson uses the rope loop model to achieve this system-level thinking.
Then students are introduced to batteries. By the end of this lesson, students should understand that for a current to flow, we must have a complete loop and a source of energy.
Lesson 2: Components
In this session, we will introduce abstract representations of components and circuits. By the end of the lesson, students will know the symbols of four important components and should understand how a circuit diagram relates to and differs from a real circuit while appreciating why it is useful as a means of representation.
Lesson 3: Current
In lesson 1 the concept of ‘something’ flowing around a loop is introduced. Here this is expanded to a more detailed explanation of what this ‘something’ is (electric current) and how it can be measured. Students are then asked to identify and correct common misconceptions.
Lesson 4: What affects current?
This lesson introduces the concepts of potential difference and resistance qualitatively, by analogy to the rope model seen in lesson 1. The intuition of potential difference as a push and resistance as an opposition to the push will be developed quantitatively in subsequent lessons.
Lesson 5: Potential difference and energy
This lesson formalises the idea of potential difference to its quantitative definition (work done per unit charge), allowing students to see that a battery stores energy. We also see that energy is transferred in any component with resistance and relate this energy transfer to potential difference, investigating the use of a voltmeter to measure this.
Lesson 6: Resistance
The core of this lesson is a practical investigation to calculate the (unknown) resistance of a component – this gives students an opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills developed in previous lessons, as well as requiring scientific numeracy (to calculate and compare resistance values using Ohm’s law).
Lesson 7: Adding extra loops
This lesson introduces the idea of a parallel circuit. Firstly, we see physical parallel circuits and their abstract representation, learning the terminology necessary to describe them. Then we see that branches can be switched on and off independently of each other, and explore the effect of adding parallel loops on current.
Lesson 8: Electricity in the home
This lesson applies the concepts learned through the course to familiar situations where electricity is used – in the home and society in general. There is a particular focus on safety, and how the ideas of current, resistance and potential difference allow us to understand these issues. Also included is a diagnostic assessment which can optionally be used to gauge student progress throughout the topic.