Electricity in Closed Circuits Lesson Plan (TEKS 4.8C): A Complete 5E Lesson on Electrical Energy and Circuits

Inside the Electricity in Closed Circuits 5E Lesson

The 5E instructional model walks students through five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It flips the traditional lecture-first sequence on its head. Students explore a concept hands-on before you ever explain it, which means by the time you do explain it, they have something to hook the vocabulary onto.

I switched to the 5E model years ago and stopped going back. Kids retain more, ask better questions, and stop staring at me waiting to be told the answer. The Electricity in Closed Circuits 5E Lesson is built on this framework from start to finish. Here's how it plays out across the five phases.

🎯 Engage

Day one is a teacher-led hands-on challenge: get the bulb to light. Each small group gets a battery, a small bulb in a holder, and two wires with alligator clips. No instructions on how to connect them. Just the challenge. Following the step-by-step teacher prompts, they figure out (with some hints) how to build a circuit that closes the loop.

By the end of the period, every kid has lit a bulb, drawn the working circuit on their student sheet in their own hand, and felt the warm bulb glass with a careful finger. Nobody has heard the words "closed circuit" or "electrical current" yet. That's the point. They're walking into the rest of the unit knowing what a working circuit looks like, even before they have the vocabulary for it.

What's included in the Engage:

• Teacher directions for the light-the-bulb circuit challenge
• Printable student observation sheet
• Answer key for the discussion questions
• Four learning objective slides (standard verbatim, "I CAN...", "WE WILL...", and essential question)
• An illustrated Energy Word Wall in English and Spanish covering the full unit vocabulary

🔬 Explore

The Electricity in Closed Circuits Station Lab is the heart of the Explore phase. Students rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) over one class period. The Station Lab is split into four input stations (where kids take in new information) and four output stations (where they show what they learned).

The four input stations:

• 🎬 Watch It! — Students watch a short video on how electrical energy travels in a closed circuit and answer guided questions.
• 📖 Read It! — A one-page reading passage on circuits at two differentiated levels, with a Spanish version included.
• 🔬 Explore It! — A hands-on circuit-building station where students light a bulb, break the circuit, and test what happens when different materials are placed in the gap.
• 💻 Research It! — Reference cards with circuit diagrams showing open and closed circuits, plus examples of common loads (bulb, motor, buzzer).

The four output stations:

• 📋 Organize It! — A card sort where students match circuit diagrams to labels (open vs. closed, working vs. not working).
• 🎨 Illustrate It! — Students draw their own labeled circuit diagram showing the battery, wires, switch, and bulb, with arrows showing the path of the current.
• ✍️ Write It! — Three open-ended questions in complete sentences where kids explain why a closed path matters.
• 📝 Assess It! — A short formative check with multiple choice and a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary paragraph.

Print and digital versions are both included. If you want the full breakdown of what happens at every single station, what students produce, and how to set it up, that's in our dedicated Station Lab post.

→ Read the full Electricity in Closed Circuits Station Lab walkthrough 8 stations, materials list, teacher tips

The Station Lab is included in the full 5E lesson. You don't need to buy it separately if you're getting the whole unit.

📚 Explain

Here's the real payoff of doing the Engage and Explore before the Explain: by the time kids hit this phase, they've already lit a bulb, broken the circuit on purpose, and tested whether a rubber band closes the loop the way a copper wire does. They have a working understanding before you ever start naming things. The discussions get deeper, the questions get sharper, and you spend less time defining and more time pushing their thinking.

The Electricity in Closed Circuits Presentation walks 4th graders through the full scope of TEKS 4.8C, one idea at a time. The deck opens with a quick reset on the forms of energy (sound, light, mechanical, thermal) and zeroes in on electrical energy: energy from the flow of an electric charge through a conductor. From there it builds the framework for understanding what's happening inside a working circuit.

Students learn that electricity is the flow of electric charge, and a working circuit needs three things in a complete loop: an energy source (a battery or wall outlet), a conductor (wires) for the energy to travel through, and a load (the bulb, motor, or buzzer that uses the energy). The deck explains that the movement of electrical energy through a circuit is called an electric current. The current flows from the energy source, through the wires, into the load, out the other side of the load, and back to the source. The path is a loop, and the energy doesn't stop along the way.

Then the lesson covers the heart of the TEKS: open vs. closed circuits. A closed circuit has a complete path. Electrical current can flow all the way around the loop, and the load turns on. An open circuit has a gap somewhere, even a tiny one. Current can't make it across the gap, so the load stays off. The deck includes the water-hose analogy: a closed circuit is like a hose with water flowing through it. Cut the hose and the water stops. Same idea. Finally, the lesson zooms in on the two forms of energy the TEKS calls out specifically: light energy (lightbulbs, flashlights, LED screens, patio lights) and thermal energy (toasters, electric stoves, hair dryers, electric heaters). Both come straight from electrical energy being changed into another form by the load.

What makes the Electricity in Closed Circuits Presentation different from a typical physical science slideshow is that kids are doing something on almost every single slide. It's not a lecture deck. It's a participation deck. "Your answer:" prompts appear on most slides, Brain Breaks reset attention every few slides, Quick Action INB tasks (vocabulary drag-and-drop matching terms to definitions, sorting circuit diagrams into open vs. closed, labeling whether a load is working or not) show up throughout, and Think About It prompts push deeper into bigger ideas like the classroom-light-switch question and a post-storm power outage troubleshooting scenario. The deck closes with a Check for Understanding tied back to the Essential Questions: How could you prove that electricity must travel through a closed path? How does electrical energy produce light and thermal energy?

The Explain materials in this product include:

• An editable 24-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (Dependent and Modified), works in PowerPoint or Google Slides
• A guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout that mirrors the Presentation, with answer key
• A Paper Interactive Notebook (English and Spanish) students cut, fold, and glue into their notebooks
• A Digital Interactive Notebook at both levels with answer keys, for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom

The Explain runs across two class periods. The built-in Think About It prompts are where the real discussion happens, so let those breathe.

🛠️ Elaborate

The Elaborate phase is where students stretch what they learned about closed circuits and put it into a project of their choosing. In this 4th grade physical science lesson, that's a Student Choice Project board with six different project options plus a "design your own" pathway.

Students might design a working flashlight using a battery, wires, a switch, and a bulb and write up their wiring plan, build a circuit diagram of three different household devices (a lamp, a toaster, a fan) showing the path of the current, or create a comic strip where a character troubleshoots why a string of holiday lights won't turn on. There are options for kids who love to write, kids who love to draw, kids who love to build, and kids who love to perform. Whatever the project, the point is the same: students apply closed circuits to a real-world artifact instead of a worksheet.

Choice is the whole point. By letting students pick how they show their thinking, you get more authentic work for TEKS 4.8C and you actually get to see what they understand about how electrical energy travels.

The rubric (the part teachers actually want)

Every project, no matter which option a student picks, is graded on the same 100-point rubric. Five categories at 20 points each:

• Vocabulary (20 pts) — At least four words from the lesson are used in context.
• Concepts (20 pts) — At least two key concepts from the lesson are referenced.
• Presentation (20 pts) — The project grabs attention and is well-organized.
• Clarity (20 pts) — Easy to understand. Free of typos.
• Accuracy (20 pts) — Drawings and models are accurate. The science is right.

The rubric uses a minus / check / plus shorthand on every row so you can grade a stack of projects quickly without re-reading every criterion.

Two differentiated versions in one file

The standard version is for students ready for independent application of closed circuits. The Reinforcement version is for students who need additional vocabulary or concept support. Three of the six options are swapped for projects with a tighter vocabulary tie-in, and "design your own" is replaced with "collaborate with the teacher" so kids aren't pitching cold.

✅ Evaluate

The Evaluate phase wraps the unit with a formal assessment. It's not all bubble-in. Several questions hand students a circuit diagram and ask them to identify whether it's open or closed, predict whether the bulb will light, and explain why.

The full assessment has 12 questions across five formats:

• Multiple choice (4 questions) covering circuit vocabulary, examples of light and thermal energy from electricity, and open vs. closed paths
• Hotspot / visual (2 questions) where students circle the closed circuit in a set of diagrams and describe how the current is flowing
• Multiselect (2 questions) where students pick all components needed to make a working circuit
• Short answer (2 questions) on what happens to electrical energy when it reaches the bulb
• Multipart scenario (2 questions) with a household troubleshooting scenario where kids identify what's broken in a non-working circuit and explain how to fix it

A modified version is included for students who need additional support. Fewer multiple-choice distractors and sentence-starter scaffolds on the short-answer items.

If you've taught all five phases, this assessment shouldn't surprise anyone. It's a chance for kids to show you they get it.