Gainfield Elementary Creates Electric Village

From GES: Fourth graders at Gainfield Elementary School (GES) in Southbury, CT demonstrated their knowledge of electricity, batteries, and circuits, lighting up a cardboard model of the town of Southbury. Their work was displayed in the Media Center at GES on December 14th and 15th.

The Electric Village is an annual event at GES where students craft cardboard buildings and use simple electrical components to ‘light’ up their models. This year’s theme was the Town of Southbury and students selected local businesses, homes, schools, and town buildings to replicate.

With the assistance of parent volunteers, teachers arranged the completed buildings into a ‘town’ and shared the final project with the school and community. The buildings were displayed with a banner, “We may be small, but together we can do big things.” Mary Tesch, a fourth grade teacher at GES commented, “This project demonstrates the joint effort of teachers, parents, administrators and community members, as well as the hard work of the students. The students look forward to this event every year and the teachers appreciate the collaboration, creativity and critical thinking that is required to make the project a success. Individually the buildings demonstrate the student’s knowledge of electricity and science, but the fun part is that together they create our town.”

The event is the culminating unit on electricity, where students are required to demonstrate knowledge of two different types of circuits and electrical components. The process involves students selecting a local building and creating their own model replica of that building at home by decorating a cardboard box. Students are then required to sketch where and how their electrical components and circuits will be used, to measure the appropriate length of wire to connect the parts, and to assemble the circuits with the different components inside their model. Students ‘wire’ their buildings at school where the teachers assess their learning.

The project requires students to apply their knowledge of math, science, the local community and town planning to complete. The end result is a building that is powered by batteries and illuminates exterior and interior lights of the students’ design.

Photo courtesy of Gainfield Elementary (# 3849: Megan Sokol, a fifth grader at Gainfield Elementary School (GES), admires the models representing Pomperaug Elementary School and Leo's Restaurant at the Electric Village display at GES.)