Ben Franklin’s Electricity Party is designed to help third grade teachers introduce their students to electricity and to help them address many of the new Tennessee State Science Goals & Standards. Some of the goals that Ben Franklin’s Electricity Party will help students meet include:
- Make pertinent connections among scientific concepts and skillful applications of listening, and speaking.
- Explore scientific phenomena and build science knowledge and skills using their own linguistic and cultural experiences with appropriate assistance or accommodations.
- Develop an in-depth understanding of the major science disciplines.
- Identify and ask appropriate questions that can be answered through scientific investigations.
- Design and conduct investigations independently or collaboratively to generate evidence needed to answer a variety of questions.
- Think critically and logically to analyze and interpret data, draw conclusions, and develop explanations that are based on evidence and are free from bias.
- Recognize that the principal activity of scientists is to explain the natural world and develop associated theories and laws.
- Cause and effect relationships that can be explained through a mechanism.
- Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) to determine what is known, what has yet to be satisfactorily explained, and what problems need to be solved.
- Developing and using models to develop explanations for phenomena, to go beyond the observable and make predictions or to test designs.
- Planning and carrying out controlled investigations to collect data that is used to test existing theories and explanations, revise and develop new theories and explanations.
- Constructing explanations and designing solutions to explain phenomena or solve problems.
- Understanding and applying scientific vocabulary correctly.
- Appropriately link technical and academic vocabulary words in the communication of scientific phenomena.
- Listen critically and engage in productive discussions surrounding a critique of scientific evidence and the validity of resulting conclusions.
- Use scientifically focused speaking and listening skills.