The Circuit Construction Kit (CCK) is a great electricity resource for middle grade and high school students to conduct science investigations and learn about electricity. This FREE resource allows students to produce simple circuits using cells, light bulbs, resistors, and switches. Students can complete series and parallel circuits and they can observe the varying brightness of the light bulbs. CCK also allows students to move into the quantitative realm. Clicking on some additional buttons enables voltmeters and ammeters, and thus measurements of voltage and current can enhance investigations.

Well equipped elementary and middle schools will have batteries, light bulbs, switches, and wires to give students real experiences in constructing circuits. CCK can compliment the physical activities with virtual activities to enhance understanding. Unfortunatley, many schools will not have these physical resources so CCK is a way to help students explore electricity. And, I have not yet come across elementary or middle schools that have class sets of ammeters or voltmeters, so this is a welcome component.

Putting CCK to use

With my middle grade students we are using CCK to discover how to make series and parallel circuits, how to use ammeters and voltmeters, how current and voltage vary in different types of circuits, what are short circuits, and to observe that the ratio voltage/current is equal to resistance (Ohm’s Law).

Of course, the possibilities of how to use CCK are vast. Teacher goals, creativity, and experience level will make this a great resource in some classrooms. Most high school physics teachers will be able to instantly employ this tool. I wish that there were more structured lesson plans for using this tool at the elementary and middle school level so that teachers who are not yet comfortable with electricity could help their students have meaningful experiences. Some lessons can be found at the teaching idea page but these are almost all high school and university lessons.

The diagram above is one of the circuits I asked my middle grade students to construct. Then using a non-contact ammeter, they measured the current through all the branches of the circuit. They later used the voltmeter to measure the voltage across each of the branches.

Reflections in teaching

Working with middle school students, I found that they had few problems in using CCK. We started off constructing real circuits and then reproducing them in CCK where they used the ammeter to measure current at different places in the circuit. Although I know the importance of “free exploration” and wrote about it before in this blog, my regret is that I didn’t allow for free exploration with this virtual tool. Students really wanted to explore lots of things on their own, without me specifying what circuits to create. So, I should have allowed time for this before directing their explorations.

The Circuit Construction Kit is a simple but powerful tool that has a lot of utility in the upper elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms. It is a rich environment for free exploration and it presents many possibilities for guided-inquiry investigations.