Conductors and Insulators

There isn't very much time to teach electricity.  Maybe 2-3 weeks?  So there are only a few points I want my sped kids to master: (1) conductors and insulators, (2) will the circuit work?, and (3) series and parallel circuits.  Today we briefly went over simple examples of which circuits will and won't work. The second half of the class was their experiment.  Excuse the dirty whiteboard.  I clean it, but it's an old board that isn't very good quality, so it doesn't stay clean for long.  The kids were to copy this format on a sheet of paper.  Once they and another person were done, they grouped up and completed the experiment together.  I had a few objects set up for them to choose from, but I wanted them to look around for themselves.

I wrote this up really fast, since I only have this one little whiteboard in my room and I had used it previously for two other things that day.  So the definitions are not perfect, but they work.  

Translation:

Conductors and Insulators Experiment

1. A conductor will allow electricity to flow. 

2. An insulator will not allow electricity to flow.

Find 10 conductors and 10 insulators.

(table numbered 1 - 10)

They did really well.  I was impressed with which things the kids thought to test. I had kids taking random things out of their bags to test, I had kids carrying their set up to the door handle or the sharpener that's bolted to the wall.  It was pretty good. And they had fun with it, too. 

Simple circuit. Light works. 

Simple circuit with metal scissors conducting electricity. 

Simple circuit that doesn't work.  The plastic is an insulator. 

This is the little Electricity kits I had in the classroom.

There were three kits, so I had three groups of 2 or 3 kids.  Some kids also got into it and built more complex circuits and then tried their object to see if it would conduct electricity or not.

Today was mostly an exploring day.  I could have just told the kids that metals are conductors and basically everything else is an insulator.  But sometimes, you just need to explore it for yourself.  It makes it easier to remember, and these will be the classes they remember most.