I conducted this Misconception Probe in two steps with two different classes. I have been teaching both classes for one and a half years, so students are familiar with my teaching methods and philosophy. We just started a new unit on electricity last week. First, I created six true or false questions using Kahoot (www.kahoot.com). This is a website where you can make a quiz online, and later students can play it as a game on individual devices. All of my students have been using it for formative assessment, classroom opinion polls, and so on.  

I let one of my Year Two classes do the quiz during a science lesson last Thursday. This class is made up of 10 girls and 14 boys with two non-Chinese native speakers. Nineteen out of 24 students participated in the Kahoot game. Two students were absent that day due to personal leave while other three chose to watch the game instead of playing. I gave each student a tablet, then they opened the Kahoot app and entered the game pin. Each time one statement about electricity was shown on the screen in front of the class, and students would choose true or false on their tablets. The results of the answers were shown on the big screen after all the students had made their choice. After finishing all six true or false questions, Kahoot showed the five students who got the most questions correct on the big screen and each student's ranking on their own tablet. Later I downloaded the results from Kahoot website. It automatically created an Excel file that included all the choices from the students and the percentage of correct answers. I used this information to analyze the data and prepare for my next step.  

The results of the Kahoot game indicated that two of the questions caused a lot of confusion. Just 26 percent of the students disagreed with the statement that a generator creates electrons for making electricity (N=19). Nevertheless the correct percentage about the question of static electricity is even lower (Figure 1). The total correct answers for the whole game were 54 percent, and only one student got all six questions correct.

Figure 1. Kahoot results of Electricity Misconception Probe , (N=19). 

After we read the story and voted for the answers, all the students were very eager to know which answer was correct. I sent a link for the book to all the parents and told the students that their homework was to discuss with their parents how windmills generate electricity. Surprisingly, many of the students came in the next day and told me that their parents weren't sure about the answer. I made this question into a challenge question for my peer-teaching program and asked who wanted to do some research on the topic and prepare for the presentation. One boy volunteered to do that and he made a PPT about windmills and mentioned there were generators inside the windmills. Students asked questions about how the generator made electricity and I showed them a broken hand generator so they can see the wires and magnets in it. I also explained the generator just make the electrons move rather than creating more electrons. 

According to the feedback, I modified my lesson plans for the next week. After we learned about the basic electrical components and how to make a circuit, each group was given a motor with a fan. They added the motors to the circuits to see if the fan would start turning. Many students said they achieved a better understanding of the interaction between electricity and magnets after they saw how the motor moved and they understood the invisible power between the magnets and the wires. I told them it was called a magnetic field and I promised them we would learn more about it in the future.