Learning Cycle - Narrative on the Electric Closed Circuit Lesson

The lesson is an introductory electricity lesson for upper elementary students.

Exploration. The teacher may choose two paths for exploration. One closed and another open. In the first, the teacher has selected a concept and task with the intention that students will conceptualize the concept by doing the task and discussing the results. In the second, the teacher asks the students what they are interested in learning. The teacher and students plan their learning based on their needs or desires. The teacher works with the students posing questions or helps the students pose questions. Next, they plan a task to explore. Imagine a classroom where the teacher/students have decided to investigate electricity. The teacher explains to the students that one way to begin to learn about a topic is to take the smallest unit or system of the topic and learn as much about that system as possible. The teacher and students decide that the smallest system for electricity would be one light bulb, one battery, and one wire. The teacher provides each student with the one light bulb, one wire, and one battery and challenges them to find-out as much as they can about the system.

Students begin to collect data and make observations such as: the battery has a top and a bottom, the top has a bump and the bottom has an indent, the wire has a plastic coating, it has a metal inside (copper wire), the bulb has threads on the side, a bump (terminal) on the bottom, a glass top, filament inside, etc. They also learn operational information. If a wire is run from the bottom of a battery to a light bulb, it will not light. The same is true if a wire is run from the top of the battery to the bulb. The bulb will light if the bottom touches the top of the battery and a wire runs from the side of the bulb to the bottom of the battery. As students explore, they can be encouraged to draw pictures that show the bulb lit; as well as, pictures that show the bulb not lit. After students light the bulb, they are challenged to light the bulb with the same objects in different ways. If students are unable to light the bulb and appear to be frustrated, the teacher can have them explain the strategies they have tried. At this point, teacher assistance is critical; helping the student to direct attention to a different strategy sustains student interest to continue exploration. After a reasonable amount of time: when student interest is decreasing students have collect two or three ways to light the bulb, or have collected all four ways to light the bulb it is time to move to the next step.

Invention. Invention is initiated with a discussion of the data collected from the exploration. Students share information to gain a deeper understanding of the bulb, wire, and battery system. This allows them to assimilate and accommodate information from their exploration and communicate what they understand. This is facilitated with drawings, diagrams, oral communications, and any other communication aid. Invention focuses students on ways to understand as they discuss, write, organize, classify, consolidate, analyze, verify, and communicate their understanding of the concept and related information in meaningful ways. It also allows the teacher to assess the level of students’ understanding of what has occurred. This discussion allows the students’ to conceptualize the concept of a closed circuit, compare it to each others, and through minimal teacher intervention examine the reasoning behind their concept of a closed circuit and how the scientific process is used to increase their understanding of not only this simple circuit but how they might generalize what they learned about this circuit to more complicated circuits.

Even if students have conceptualized a scientifically acceptable concept of a closed circuit during the exploration stage, the invention stage is still necessary to complete their learning experience. The invention stage allows students to operationalize a procedure for lighting the bulb and communicating it in a scientific manner appropriate to the students’ developmental level and predict how it might be applied in other situations all of which makes the learning experience more meaningful. A finished communication for middle schools students might be similar to the following statements. To have a transfer of energy with a battery, wire, and flashlight bulb there must be a continuous path (a closed circuit) with the following parts of the objects in the path: 1) top of the battery; 2) bottom of the battery; 3) threaded side of the bulb; and 4) bottom of the bulb such that the electricity can flow through each object. A diagram of four possible, different models of this system could be drawn with all four places marked in color and the path of electricity traced. Further, students would use this model to predict how other circuits may or may not be closed.

Discovery. The lesson might very well end here, but the cycle should continue with the discovery of how the concept can be used. This could be done through any number of activities pre-selected by the teacher, or selected from ideas the students generate during the invention stage, or at the beginning of the discovery stage. The main consideration is students discover a use for their new concept of a closed circuit and extensions of it.

Some sample activities: Use the closed circuit to create a circuit tester and use it to test objects by putting them into the circuit and recording if the circuit is "open" or "closed" for each object. The students would use the concept of a closed circuit not only when they make the circuit tester but each time they test each object. The teacher can observe students during the activity and use it as assessment. As the students use the concept of closed circuit to classify objects, they are discovering the utility and power of the concept and collecting data to conceptualize new concepts, conductor and non-conductor. Therefore, this activity is discovery for how to apply the concept and is the beginning of a new Learning Cycle exploration and invention for the concepts of conductor and non-conductor. The activity could also be used as a discovery for the application of the concept of a model by having students create a model to explain the difference between a conductor and non-conductor.

Another activity would have students explore by giving them an additional bulb, or battery. Have the students draw ten different circuits, predict if each would be opened or closed, theorize why, experiment for each, and record all results. This gives students opportunities to generalize the concept of a closed circuit to more complex circuits and leads to other possible inventions: parallel or series circuits for sources, receivers, or in combination.

Both examples show a usefulness for expanding the concept of a closed circuit and begin another cycle with an exploration stage. Students’ progress through these cycles is similar to the construction of knowledge according to Piaget’s learning theory and a progression of increasing knowledge through scientific investigation.

During the exploration phase, the teacher is continually assessing to see what the students know and how well they know it. Based on this information the teacher must decide if the students are able to proceed without becoming frustrated or bored. If the teacher determines this is not possible, then the teacher must intervene. During the invention phase, all of the activity is centered around assessment of what students know and how well they know it. This begins by sharing the students’ data. The data can be discussed and evaluated according to how it was collected, how it was organized, the reasoning used to gain meaning, and how all of this is communicated orally, visually, and written. During this discussion the teacher gains valuable information of what students know and how well they know it. Based on this information the teacher must decide what to say or what NOT to say to facilitate student learning. As the students use the learning cycle, the teacher will discover not only what students know and how well they know it but how students in general understand concepts, articulate concepts, and generalize concepts to refine them or create new ones. Therefore, assessment information is authentic and performance based.

Summary and Conclusion

The learning cycle is a process for teachers to organize and analyze learning experiences. While teachers may use the learning cycle in an inquiry or discovery type lesson outstanding teachers teach students how to engage in learning experiences on their own. To achieve this goal concepts must be conceptualized in a variety of categories: subject areas, processes, disposition toward subject areas, perspective of subject areas, personal power to enable learning, and social power to cooperate with others. A student that is lacking in any category will not have received the best possible education. A teacher’s responsibility is to help students achieve in all areas and the learning cycle can be a tool to help teachers do this.