It’s Electric is a fifth grade STEM lesson designed to teach the concept of a circuit as well as help students understand the difference between conductors and insulators. This lesson uses inquiry-based learning through conductive paint, and Scratch (a simple coding website) to help students understand what a circuit is and how it works.  

The purpose of this project was to create a usable lesson (for next year during student teaching) that allowed students to explore the use of conductive and insulated materials and gain a basic understanding of simple coding techniques on Scratch.  

The lecture portion of the lesson was designed with Canva (using a template and editing as necessary) and used to introduce and provide examples of how circuits work and how they relate to the real world. 

The lab handouts were also designed using Canva. Each example is intended for the students' to use conductive paint and trace the dotted lines to test and see if the example is a circuit or not. The blue space to the right of each example is for the students' to explain their findings. At the STOP portion of the handout, the student will direct their attention back to the front as the class discusses short circuits.  

The final portion of the lesson (two circuit simulations) was designed in a simple programming website called Scratch where student could explore the difference between series and parallel circuits through basic coding.