Science Vocabulary Ideas: Collaborative anchor charts for electrical conductors and insulators

I was thinking about how many of our anchor charts are teacher-made. Sure, we get student input, but what if we had a way to really include students in our anchor chart-making process?  

Collaborative anchor charts are made by groups of students after completing a task.

To make a collaborative anchor chart for science vocabulary, students work both together under the teacher’s guidance to complete a task, talk about it, and write about it. 

In this post, I’ll share an example of how students made a collaborative anchor chart about electrical conductors and insulators.

Prep

• I taped 6 items to sticky notes with labels and placed them around the room on 6 different tables.
• Each of the 6 tables also had the materials for a circuit: light bulb in a holder, battery in a holder, and 2 wires with alligator clips.
• A team was at each table.
• I set up the skeleton for the anchor chart.
• I was sure that rules and expectations for safety were explicit.

Activity

Review Vocabulary

We reviewed our focus vocabulary: conductor, insulator, flow, electricity, circuit, and current.

Test Items

We rotated the tested materials around from table to table.

Groups tested the 6 different materials to determine whether they were good insulators or good conductors of electricity.

We quickly went over the answers as a class.

Written Explanation

I passed out a sticky note with the items taped on and a blank sticky note to each group of students.

Groups wrote an explanation of why the assigned material was either a conductor or insulator using the vocabulary terms.  

Present

Then, they placed their sticky notes on the T-chart and briefly presented their card.

This strategy helped students get some good practice with related vocabulary and they had multiple opportunities to speak, listen, and explain their thinking both verbally and in writing.