The Young Science Investigators (YSI): Project Kit is a free interactive Science resource for 7-11 year olds from the BP Educational Service. It invites pupils to become Young Science Investigators, using the cartoon characters Beepy, Dev and Kate with a focus on science at work in the real world and scientific enquiry skills.

The kit is based around three curriculum topics : Electricity, Forces and Materials.

You need to register with the BP site to access it, but it’s free to do so.Find out more at : www.bp.com/bpes/ysiprojectkit

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, commissioned and funded by the Wellcome Trust, has created The Great Plant Hunt. This project will encourage Primary school children to explore the natural world around them and join other schools in the biggest ever school science project.

The Great Plant Hunt invites primary school children to follow in the footsteps of Darwin by going on nature walks in and around their school grounds. They’ll find out more about plants and in the process learn key scientific skills. There is a lot more information, and links to resources in the Teacher Area of the site.

In addition to the activity ideas, there are also interactive resources to use on an IWB such as Plant or Not?, Herby Havoc and Sunflower Survival.

All teaching materials and resources are available to download – so you can make your own Treasure Chest of resources to run The Great Plant Hunt completely free.

A few handy links by way of follow up to todays talk about KS3 and KS2/3 Transition

Science Transition Passport – a set of activities from ASE Science Year for a KS2/3 Transition Project

AstraZeneca STAY project – KS2/3 Transition project

The London Challenge – report on a Transition project

Impact of the new KS3 Curriculum – Ofsted Report

KS3 National Curriculum – revised

To answer another one of the questions you submitted. Trying to explain why the brightness of bulbs in a circuit changes can be tricky. It can be helpful to imagine different analogies/models to explain what is happening.

A very nice place to start is this presentation from Skool.co.uk

A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.

Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.

Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second parthway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.

A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.

In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer

In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)

This page from the BBC KS2 Bitesize site is pretty useful.

The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.

More Links and Resources

Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits

The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!

From BBC Science Clips, try these resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml)

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone – Electricity Videos

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox – Electricity