Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: Setting Up Electrical Loops

Bringing together two sets of constraints

Focusing on the learners:

Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting. How to:

• draw out the ideas that students use to make predictions
• separate ideas of current and voltage, met previously
• connect calculations done to ideas used to account for the circuits
• reinforce the difference between series and parallel connections in circuits

Teacher Tip: These are all related to findings about children's ideas from research. The teaching activities will provide some suggestions. So will colleagues, near and far.

Focusing on the physics:

Representing–noticing–recording. How to:

• emphasise the necessity of representing the complete loop as a connected system
• link the phenomena to the toolkits that you use to make predictions
• make the tookits evidently intelligible and fruitful
• use teaching models systematically
• give physical reasons for changes in current as the circuit is altered

Teacher Tip: Connecting what is experienced with what is written and drawn is essential to making sense of the connections between the theoretical world of physics and the lived-in world of the children. Don't forget to exemplify this action.