Lesson video

Hi, everybody.

It's Miss Simkin back again for your next science lesson.

I hope that you are having a good day, a good week, and I hope that the science makes it a little bit better because we've got a great science lesson plan today.

Let me show you our lesson question.

Our lesson question is what happens in a circuit when we change the components? So we've learned lots about circuits, and now we're going to see what happens when we change things around.

We're going to make some predictions today.

For this lesson, you will need please, a piece of paper, a pencil, a colouring pencil, if you want to mark your work in a different colour, and a ruler.

If you don't have those things, then you can pause the video and go and get them for me now, please.

You will also need these star words for this lesson.

So I'm going to say the word, and then you're going to say the word when I point to the screen.

Circuit.

Component.

Electricity.

Ammeter.

Voltmeter.

Great, in today's lesson, this is what we are going to be doing.

We're going to do a quick recap of what we've learned so far.

We're going to talk about how we measure electricity.

We're going to make a prediction, then we're going to test that prediction and do an investigation.

And then we're going to write a conclusion.

So we're going to write up the results of our investigation so that we can communicate to people what we found.

So, let's start please by naming these components.

You can do it just by pointing at your screen and saying what you can see.

Great, so A is a wire, B is a cell, and C is a switch that's closed.

Well done if you remembered.

Can you now have a go at drawing the components on the screen? So see if you can remember what our symbols were or are for each of these components, please.

Pause the video and draw these for me now.

Great, let's check your answers.

So this is our symbol for a cell, this is a lamp, and this is a switch.

And we'll be using mostly cells and lamps in today lesson.

So if you need to correct any of your symbols, it's not a problem, just pause the video and do that for me now.

Great, okay, last bit of quick recap, last lesson we learned about electrical conductors, which allow electricity to pass through them and electrical insulators which stop the flow of electricity.

There are six different materials on the board, rubber, sea water, metal, wood, copper, and plastic.

Can you sort them please into two columns? So conductors and insulators.

Pause the video and do that for me now, please.

So, in our conductors column, the materials that allow electricity to pass through them, we should have sea water or salty water, metal cutlery, silver cutlery, you could have written metal or silver, it's fine, and copper.

And then in our insulator column for materials that stop the flow of electricity, you should have rubber, wood and plastic.

Well done if you remembered this.

Now, in today's lesson, we're going to learn all about how we can measure electricity.

This picture on the screen is of something called an ammeter.

So there are two things that we can easily measure in a circuit, the current and the voltage.

The current tells us how quickly electricity is flowing around the circuit.

And this can be measured using an ammeter like the one on the screen.

To use an ammeter, we have to put it inside the circuit, like in this diagram here.

So you can see in this circuit diagram, you've got three cells, you've got one lamp, and then you've got an ammeter that's inside that circuit.

So if you were to read what was on the ammeter, and sometimes it's a dial like this with a hand, a bit like a clock, sometimes it's like a digital screen, it will tell you how much current is running through this circuit, which means how quickly the electricity is flowing through.

Okay, I often remember that because a current is something you find in the sea.

It's like a stream of water that moves really quickly.

Okay, so when we talk about the current in electricity, it means how quickly that electricity is flowing around the circuit.

We can also measure voltage.

Sorry, you can hear Charlie barking.

Charlie is not a fan of voltage.

I'm going to speak loudly over him.

The voltage tells us how much energy a component, so such as a buzzer or a bulb, is receiving.

This can be measured using a voltmeter like on the screen.

So it looks very similar to an ammeter.

It's got a big V on it.

The higher the voltage, the brighter the bulb will be, or the louder the buzzer.

So you can see the dial on the screen on that voltmeter is at six.

If we were to increase the voltage to 12 or 14, then any bulbs in that circuit would shine more brightly because they have more energy.

A voltmeter is measuring the amount of voltage, which tells us how much energy a component has.

We connect a voltmeter differently to an ammeter though.

We connect it outside of the main circuit.

So here's an example.

So you can see, we start with the same original circuit.

We've got three cells and a lamp, but the voltmeter is connected outside of that circuit.

And it's connected, one wire connects it before the components, in this case the lamp, and then after.

So it like surrounds the lamp so it can measure how much energy that lamp is receiving.

Okay, otherwise it would be measuring the energy somewhere else in the circuit.

We need to know how much energy that lamp is receiving.

Okay, so this is just a little summary table to help us compare ammeters and voltmeters.

So you can see that both are drawn with a circle symbol, but then they have the letter that they begin with.

So an ammeter symbol is an A, and a voltmeter symbol is a V.

What do they measure? Ammeters measure how quickly electricity is flowing around a circuit, and a voltmeter measures how much energy a component is receiving.

So, ammeter is the flow around, how quickly it's going, and a voltmeter is how much energy one, like an individual component is receiving.

We connect the ammeter inside the main circuit, but we connect a voltmeter outside the main circuit, okay.

You might want to write that table down or take a mental image in your head because I'm going to ask you some questions on this in a moment and see how much you can remember.

Take a picture.

Okay, here are your questions.

What does current tell us? I'm just giving you a clue.

Where do we put an ammeter in the circuit? What does voltage tell us? And where do we put a voltmeter in a socket? Pause the video and answer these questions for me now, please.

Great, let's check your answers.

So the current tells us how quickly electricity is flowing around a circuit.

An ammeter goes inside the circuit.

The voltage tells us how much energy a component is receiving.

And a voltmeter goes outside the main circuit.

Well done, if you've got those correct.

If you need to edit or change any of your answers, pause the video and use the ones on the screen for me now, please.

Great, okay, now I'd like you to complete this diagram.

We've been practising drawing circuit diagrams in our previous lesson.

So the first thing I want you to do is to draw the circuit diagram that's on the screen.

And then I would like you to add an A and a V to the diagram to show where the ammeter and voltmeter should be.

Okay, remember to use a ruler when drawing a circuit diagram? And the first thing to do is to draw the components along an imaginary rectangle, and then you'll use your ruler to join them up in an actual rectangle.

Pause the video and complete that for me now, please.

Take your time and be neat with it.

Great, so this is what your diagram should look like.

We've got our ammeter on the inside of the main circuit, and our voltmeter on the outside connected to either side of our lamp.

Well done, if you've got that correct.

And everybody, well done for drawing your really neat circuit diagram.

Do you remember the very first time you drew one a couple of lessons ago? It was quite tricky, and now they're getting easier and neater and better, so good job.

Okay, now, we are going to make a prediction.

So I am going to set up a circuit that looks like this.

It's got one lamp and one cell.

So I'll just show you that.

It looks like this, one cell connected, and one lamp connected in a complete loop by two wires.

Okay, so this is our original circuit.

So this is what you need to have in mind.

I want you to predict what will happen if we add more cells to the socket, and then, what will happen if we add more lamps to the circuit, okay.

So the first thing we're going to do is we'll start with our original circuit, and then we're going to add another cell and another cell, and see what happens.

The next thing we're going to do is we'll go back to that original circuit.

So we'll start with one cell, and then we're going to add another lamp and add another lamp and add another lamp.

When we're making a prediction in science, we're guessing what's going to happen, but we need to think about what we already know, that science we already know, before we make that prediction.

So let's think about what we already know.

We already know that if we don't have a voltmeter, we can use the brightness of a lamp to judge how much energy that component is receiving, okay? So we know that the higher the voltage, the brighter the lamp will be.

So even if I don't have a voltmeter, I know that if I have a really dim lamp, then I don't have a very high voltage.

If I have already bright lamp, then I have a high voltage.

I also know that my lamp lights up when energy flows through it.

At the moment, it's not lit up because there's no energy flowing through it.

And I know that my cell provides the power, just another word for energy, for the circuit.

So thinking about those things, if I add another cell, what's going to happen to my lamp? Is it going to get brighter? Is it going to get dinner? Can you please write two predictions using the sentence stems? I predict that if we increase the number of cells in the circuit that.

What will happen to your lamp? Brighter or dimmer? Pause the video and complete that now.

And then we're going to make the second projection.

What happens if we keep increasing the number of lamps? Will they get brighter or dimmer? Pause the video and finish that prediction for me now, please.

Okay, now let's test and see if your predictions were correct.

Before we begin, can you draw this table please? So it's got three columns.

One heading means to say number of lamps, number of cells, and then your observations.

Pause the video and draw that table for me now and remember to use your ruler.

Great, okay, let's take a look then at our first circuit which will have one lamp and one cell.

So let's set up our first circuit.

So you can see here that we're starting, like we said, with one cell and one bulb.

And if I connect the circuit, then you can check that it works, oops.

There you go, my bulb lights.

So you can now write in your table, one cell, one bulb, and your observations.

Maybe just something like bulb lights up or bulb is glowing.

Now, we're going to have a look at what happens when we have two cells in the circuit.

So we're going to look at two cells and one bulb.

You can write that in your table.

So in this circuit, I've got two cells now, and I've got my bulb here.

And let's see what happens when I connect it.

My bulb lights up.

But if we compare it to my bulb over here, just one cell.

So this is my bulb with two cells, and this is my bulb with one cell, can you see the difference between the two? This bulb is much brighter.

You can tell because you can see more light coming out of it and all around here, you can see where the light is shining on the table.

You don't get this with this light bulb.

So when we add two cells in, you can write your observations.

What do you notice about the bulb? Is it dimmer, is it brighter? Great, now, let's test what happens when we add the third cell in.

So I've got one, two, three cells all connected by a wire.

You can't see it on the screen, but it's all connected.

And then I'm just going to put the last one in.

I'll moved my hand so you can see the bulb.

Wow, even brighter this time, you can see all around here the light its exuding.

So you can add that observation to your table.

This time we have one, two, three cells and one bulb.

Pause the video and do that now.

Were your predictions correct? Well done, if they were.

Now, let's try our second investigation.

So we're going to start with the same original circuit with one lamp and one cell.

And this time we're going to change the number of lamps or bulbs.

So you can see down here that we've got our original circuit and when I connect it, my bulb lights up.

Now we're going to see what happens when I add another bulb into the mix.

So I'm going to have to disconnect it in order to set it up.

So it's going to go off again.

And then I'm going to add another bulb in here.

So you can see now I've got two bulbs and I'm going to complete the circuit.

Okay, I'm going to move them closer together so you can see really clearly what's happening.

This is when it's connected, and then disconnected.

Connected, disconnected.

So you can see the bulbs are coming on, but they're very dim.

You can barely see the light, okay.

So can you please pause the video and write down your observations in your table for two bulbs and one cell.

Brilliant, now that we have got our results and we've seen what happens in our investigation, we're going to write a conclusion.

So, a conclusion in science is a way of presenting what we find.

So it explains to other people what we found out when we did our investigation.

Before we write our conclusion for this investigation that we've just done, I want to show you some examples and some scaffolds, some help to help you to write a really good conclusion.

So this is an example of a conclusion from a different investigation.

It says, I'm going to read it to you, you can read along with me, or you can just listen.

"In our investigation, we found that as you move an object closer to the light source, the shadow gets bigger.

This was shown in our results as the size of the shadow was only nine centimetres at the longest distance, and was 19 centimetres at the shortest distance.

This is because a shadow is made by blocking light.

And the closer an object is to the light source, the more light it blocks." Okay, so this is a good conclusion.

And I'm going to explain to you how it's structured.

So this conclusion is three sentences long, and it can be split into three parts.

It follows a certain structure, which is PEE.

And I'll show you that in a second.

So the first sentence is where you make your point.

So you say what you found in your investigation.

So in our investigation, we found that when you move an object closer to the light source, the shadow gets bigger.

You just make your point, you say what you found.

Then the second section in green is where you give evidence.

So you would refer to the results that you wrote down.

So this is shown in our results as the size of the shadow was only nine centimetres at the longest distance and 19 centimetres at the shortest distance.

So this is evidence that I should be able to find by looking in your results table.

And then the last sentence is where you explain.

So you say why you think this happened, why you got the result you did.

So this is because a shadow is made by blocking light.

And the closer an object is to the light source, the more light it blocks, okay? So this is the structure that that conclusion followed, make your point, give evidence, and then explain your evidence.

And this is that PPE structure, but with sentence stems below it.

So you would write three sentences in a conclusion most of the time.

So you would write one sentence where you make your point, and you could start it like this, "In our investigation, we found that.

." Then you write a second sentence where you give your evidence.

And you can start it by saying, "This was shown in our results as.

." And then lastly, you explain, "This is because.

." Okay, so I would like you now to think back to the investigation we just did to have a look at your results table, where you've written the number of bulbs and the number of lamps and your observations.

And I want you to write your conclusion.

In our investigation, we found that, what did we find out? Here, you can just focus on what happened when we changed the number of cells, okay? You don't need to write a conclusion for both the lamps and the cells.

But if you want to challenge yourself, you can, okay.

So in our investigation, we found that when you change the number of cells, what happens? This was shown in our results as.

And then you could use something from your results table.

You can say, when we had three cells in our circuit, this happened.

Or when we only had one cell in our circuit, this happened.

And then you explain, why is that? What did we learn at the beginning of the lesson about measuring electricity? Can you use your key words, like voltage or energy to explain? Pause the video and have a go at writing your conclusion now, please.

Great, good job.

I'm going to show you an example.

Let's see if yours was something like this.

In our investigation, we found that when we added more cells to the circuit, the lamp became brighter.

That is what we found.

This was shown in our results as our circuit with three cells was the brightest.

And then the explanation.

This is because the cells provide the energy for a circuit.

So when there are more cells, there is more energy provided for the lamp and so it can glow brighter.

Okay, make sure you've got the key word energy in there.

More energy, they can go glow brighter.

What I'd like you to do now is to take the opportunity to edit or to improve your work.

There's always a way you can improve.

You can read it carefully, check for spelling mistakes, check for punctuation.

You can use the ideas on the screen to make your language sound more scientific, to include more keywords, okay.

So everybody should be aiming to make their work a little bit better using the example on the screen, please.

So pause the video and do that for me now.

Fantastic, that brings us to the end of our lesson.

Well done for all of your hard work today.

I'm really, really proud of what you've achieved.

If you'd like to show the work to somebody, then you can go and find the adult in your house and show them what you've done, and explain the investigation to them.

You could also ask your parent or carer to share photos of your work on Twitter.

They would need to use the hashtag #LearnWithOak or hashtag #ONAscience, and then I will be able to see them.

Thanks for listening so carefully today and working so hard.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and I will hopefully see you back here soon for another science lesson, bye everybody.