Energy, Light & Electricity

Expedition Date: February & March

Location: BUEI (Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute)

Expedition Description: P4 Light Lab Adventures: Explore Energy, Light & Electricity at BUEI

Get ready, P4 scientists! Step into the Light Lab at BUEI for a hands-on adventure exploring light, energy, and electricity. Through exciting experiments with mirrors, prisms, flashlights, and simple circuits, students discover how light travels, reflects, and bends, and how energy moves through electrical systems. Pupils investigate natural and artificial light, explore colour and refraction, and make connections to Bermuda’s ocean environment, including bioluminescent marine life.

Students will:

• Explore how light travels, reflects, and refracts
• Understand how we see objects through reflected light
• Investigate natural and artificial light sources
• Build and explore simple electrical circuits and energy transfer
• Use scientific vocabulary to explain their thinking

Curriculum Links

• 4Pf.01 Know that energy is present in all matter and in sound, light and heat
• 4Pf.02 Know that energy cannot be made, lost, used up or destroyed but can be transferred
• 4Pf.03 Know that energy is required for any movement or action
• 4Pf.04 Know that not all energy is transferred from one object to another; some is transferred to the environment as sound, light, or heat
• 4Ps.01 Know that light travels in straight lines and can be represented with ray diagrams
• 4Ps.02 Know that light reflects off surfaces
• 4Ps.03 Describe how objects which are not light sources are seen
• 4Pe.03 Describe how changing the number or type of components in a series circuit can affect brightness
• 4Pe.04 Know that some materials are good conductors (especially metals) and some are good insulators

A free copy of the Mentor Text is provided at the expedition: Oscar and the Moth: A Book about Light and Dark by Geoff Waring

Vocabulary Voyage

The P4 Energy, Light & Electricity thematic unit is built around the mentor text Oscar and the Moth: A Book about Light and Dark by Geoff Waring supporting ELA curriculum-aligned literacy learning alongside an experiential school visit with AgraLiving as part of the Horizons Programme.

The Vocabulary Voyage offers a set of optional resources designed to enrich language learning in an engaging and practical way. Three short, flexible vocabulary activities encourage pupils to develop language through through small-group discussion, collaboration and creative thinking. Two additional independent writing tasks, linked to the theme of the unit, provide structured opportunities for pupils to apply new vocabulary in meaningful written contexts.

These resources ssupport oral language development, vocabulary growth, comprehension, and writing skills, while remaining easy to incorporate into short literacy blocks or small pockets of classroom time.