Workshop On Electricity Sparks Student Interest

By Susan Coney

Art Ellis, the science curator at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, paid a visit to the fourth graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week. Mr Ellis provided the students with a two-day, hands-on workshop to introduce the youngsters to a form of energy they use everyday: electricity.

The purpose of the program is to help students investigate and discover for themselves the relationship between magnetism and electricity.

New state curriculum standards require fourth graders to have a unit of study on electricity. Fourth grade teacher Kathy Gramolini said, “Recently the state adopted electricity into the unit for fourth grade. The Eli Whitney Museum has been around a long time. They always have good programs so we thought it would be a great resource to use to introduce electricity.”

Mr Ellis commented, “Electricity is so abstract and very difficult. The teachers are right on top of it. It seems simple enough for a teacher to put together these resources, but it would take hours and hours for them to prepare a hands-on workshop such as this. The standardized science testing, which will be in effect in the next couple years puts tremendous pressure on the teachers to teach everything.”

As students filed into the cafeteria, they gathered together for an introduction to the electricity unit, providing them with essential background information. “We do two projects in two days. This gives each child an experiential level to start teaching the vocabulary, principles, and ideas. We’ve got to give kids the experience. I design the projects so every child can succeed, and also so everyone is challenged,” Mr Ellis elaborated.

Two basic projects were introduced to the children. The first day they learned about the relationship linking electricity and magnetism and constructed an electromagnet circuit. The students took the project home to show and discuss it with their parents. The following day, when the children reassembled with Mr Ellis, they reviewed the lesson from the previous day and discussed whether their experiment worked when they brought it home. Fourth grader Maura Carroll raised her hand to say, “Mine didn’t work.” Mr Ellis replied, “Well that’s an opportunity to fix it.” After discussing the problems Maura had encountered, Mr Ellis determined that it was a fixable, mechanical problem, and teamed her with another student as a resource for her to get the project up and running.

The second day of the workshop the children learned how electricity works in lighting a house. The objective of the lesson was to teach the fourth graders how to wire a complete circuit using one or more lights. They were introduced to technical terms such as voltage, amperage, electrical distribution, circuits, as well as a few fun terms used during the assembling demonstration, such as righty-tighty and lefty-loosey, when using a screwdriver.

The students wore safety goggles, used hammers, screwdrivers, batteries, and wires during the experiments. The scene looked like a technical assembly production line of elves building tiny model houses in Santa’s workshop. Several parent volunteers provided assistance when students got stumped or simply needed an additional pair of hands.

Mr Ellis encouraged the students to save themselves a great deal of frustration by checking to make certain that the batteries and lights he provided them worked before they assembled the model. He said, “The whole secret to electronics is to test, test, test before you start and as you go along.” He reminded the students to make certain that all of the connection points were secure to help ensure a successful outcome.

As the children worked on wiring the models they were able to view a basic, wired sample available at each table to follow as a guide; however Mr Ellis challenged the students to take the experiment to a higher level by figuring out independently how to wire several lights on to the model.

Fourth grader Carly Sullivan said, “This is a good learning experience. I’ve learned a lot in the past two days.” Classmates John Bashik and Grandon Smith worked together to build their models. John commented, “It’s a wicked experiment. We are using doing team work.” His partner Grandon agreed, saying, “I think with team work you can get it done; and actually doing it is a lot more fun.” Both boys admitted that the two-day workshop made learning about electricity much more interesting than simply reading about it in a book.

Fourth grade teacher Ellen Buckley said that the students would begin studying about electricity in the classroom when school resumes after the holiday break in January. She stated, “This workshop is a great way to introduce the kids to the electricity unit.”