The “Explore Phase”

Explore phase self-reflection

The “Explore Phase” is the phase where students have a more hands-on experience where students express their current conceptions and demonstrate them to clarify puzzling elements of the engage phase. The objective of the explore phase is student can explore a topic, investigate and develop questioning and critical thinking skills about the science topic we are working. During these phases, we are going to observe that phenomena mean more than what is visible to the naked eye, work with each other to figure out the natural occurrence and go through our senses (ex.

Sight and smell). During this time, students will identify the physical and chemical characteristics and record their findings in the investigation packet.

We, as a group, decided to set up six stations, and each station will have an activity related to the physical and chemical change. Each group will rotate to each station and record their findings there. We decided to use materials; milk and sour milk, clay to manipulate, bananas ripped and unripened, plastic and burned plastic bottle so students can observe and record their findings.

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As we walk around, we asked the students: Why it is like this? What kind of change is it? Are there any changes in the color, size, and shape or smell?

We decided to do this because we thought this is the most effective and interactive way to invoke their investigative and critical thinking skills, as well as evoke a sense of curiosity within the students. When we did this, I heard the students ask how this reaction happened and discussed among themselves about what type of reaction it could’ve been.

We can see they are excited when students gathered around the station, wonder what kind of activities we are doing and what are there at the stations and when they saw the Station 1; Bananas they started discussing with the friends why one is green, the second one is yellow and other one is brown? What are we doing with the bananas and what kind of the change is it chemical or physical change? They didn’t particularly say what kind change is it but created the interest in them? Why is the brown one squishy? Other instance when the students gather around Station 3 where we placed milk and sour milk when they smelled it, they put disgusting faces, wondering what caused the smell? We used the three-dimensional learning so it can help foster all student sense of curiosity a wonder in science.

What is vital for the teacher

I think the students were very excited about these activities so it is vital as a teacher to help guide them to focus on what is most important, observing the changes that are occurring and watching for one of the indicators listed in the handouts. We planned this lesson like this so the student can explore and record the observation and we can encourage them by asking the questions such as do you think it is still milk? And why it happened and asked students what happened to milk. We created this lesson plan to foresee the questions from the student like- is it because of heat? Or it may be left out outside for longer time? By doing this, we got positive feedback from the collaborative peers as our strongest strength the comment is that “we can make the students explain their thinking skills and have a deep understanding of phenomena and able to touch the topic about the chemical (changes).

To encourage the students, we planned to give an investigative question how manipulating a substance effect before and after manipulation? We included this question so we can get more questions and more answers but due to lack of time, we would get more time to talk in detail and depth.

We concluded our explore phase by collecting the student work, I saw that all students were able to distinguish the physical and chemical changes. I saw students came up different physical and chemical characteristics and defined, explained them in their vocabulary since we didn’t officially introduce the scientific terms. We didn’t address or hear any misconceptions during the engage phase nor explored phase, and we guess we will listen to some misconceptions from the students during other stages. But anyhow we told them we would be addressing them in coming classes.

Conclusion

We concluded the explore phase by asking the students to share out the ideas about the station, what they observed and we told them we would find out in more details in the next explain phase class where we can learn in detail. We did this because we want to accomplish our object to make student explore the topic, develop questioning and investigative skills.

References

1. Campbell, T., Schwartz, C., & Wind Schiff, M. (n.d.). What we call misconceptions may be necessary stepping stones toward making sense of the world.
2. Joe Krajcik Three Dimensional Instructions
3. The BSCS 5E Instructional Model: personal reflections and contemporary implications by Rodger w Bybee.
4. DCIs, SEPs, and CCs, oh my! By Ravit Golan Duncan and Veronica l. cavera.
5. http://ngss.nsta.org/CrosscuttingConcepts.aspx?id=2