Your students have been called upon to help the residents of Circuitburg, a town plunged into power outage darkness, in this Year 6 Physical Sciences unit.

The inquiry-based unit focuses on hands-on experiences to help your students learn about electrical energy transfer and transformation. Your students will begin by considering their own electricity usage and tinkering to try to work out how to create a circuit. They will then learn about the electrical components and how to draw accurate series and parallel circuit diagrams.

Your students will delve into conductors and insulators, as well as different types of batteries, through two fun investigations. The first will support the students in learning and using science inquiry skills. The second will see them applying their skills to independently complete an investigation for assessment. A comprehensive marking rubric is provided.

Other engaging activities along the way include creating a wire loop buzzer game and a glowing gift card.

When your students reach the end of the unit, they will collate all the symbols they have gathered throughout and enter the code into Circuitburg’s energy source. To do this, they will complete another assessment with a second rubric provided. Upon completion, the energy source will power up, and Circuitburg will finally have electricity.

This unit includes everything you need to confidently plan, teach and assess 8 lessons of Physical Sciences, Science Inquiry and Science as a Human Endeavour V9 Australian Curriculum aligned content.

The unit plan package downloads as a zip file and contains the following resources:  

• Unit Guide: includes a scope and sequence, unit overview, lesson plans with associated resources, a game with cards, assessments, rubrics, suggested resources and tiered vocabulary lists.
• PowerPoint: provides supplementary information for each lesson and slowly reveals the code symbols for Circuitburg’s energy source.
• Displays: a unit banner, the Circuitburg newspaper article, a poster to keep track of the code symbols, a range of electrical energy explanation posters, circuit component cards and word wall cards.