Electricity (KS2)
Electricity is one of the most satisfying topics to teach in KS2 science, because children can build a circuit and see it work. It’s taught in Year 4 and again in Year 6, getting more precise each time. Here’s what the curriculum expects, and where to find lessons and resources to teach it.
What children learn about electricity at KS2
What the national curriculum expects
Electricity is taught in Year 4 and Year 6. Year 4 covers identifying common appliances that run on electricity, constructing a simple series circuit and naming its parts including cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers, working out whether a lamp will light in a complete loop, recognising that a switch opens and closes a circuit, and recognising common conductors and insulators. Year 6 covers associating the brightness of a lamp or volume of a buzzer with the number and voltage of cells, comparing how components function, and using recognised symbols to represent a circuit in a diagram.
Key knowledge and concepts
Within this topic, children build knowledge across how circuits work and how to represent them:
Sources of electricity
Where electricity comes from, and what runs on it
Series circuits
Building a simple circuit, and what makes it work
Circuit components
Cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers
Complete and incomplete circuits
Why a lamp lights, and why sometimes it doesn't
Switches
How opening and closing a circuit controls it
Conductors and insulators
Which materials carry electricity, and which don't
Voltage
How the number and voltage of cells changes what a circuit does
Circuit symbols
Drawing circuits using recognised symbols
Where this topic sits within KS2
Electricity is taught in Year 4 and again in Year 6. Year 4 is about building and naming, and Year 6 is about measuring, comparing and representing. Schools sometimes link the Year 6 work to design and technology, where the curriculum asks pupils to use electrical systems in their products.
How to access this topic
Electricity doesn’t sit on its own in the curriculum. The Cornerstones science curriculum is fully sequenced from EYFS through Year 1 to Year 6, so you can see what comes before, what follows and how the whole picture fits together. We’ve done the thinking, so your planning time goes into teaching, not sequencing.
Full curriculum
Subject curriculum
Quick Teach Individual lessons and resources for supplementing what you already teach.
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See how the full Cornerstones Science Curriculum sequences topics like this one across every year group.