While designing the electrostatics and circuit unit plan, I recognized that the Van de Graaff generator would provide useful learning experiences for my students. However, to make sense of the Van de Graaff activities, students would require a conceptual understanding of charge interactions and charging by friction. I intentionally structured the preceding lessons in the unit plan to build the exact foundational understanding necessary for understanding the behavior of the Van de Graaff generator. Then, students demonstrated this understanding through a worksheet activity. My instructional planning framed understanding the behavior of a Van de Graaff generator as an instructional goal, explicitly linked to the content standards. Planning with this intention ensured that content standards were embedded in relevant applications of content and could be gathered through guided inquiry experiences.