Welcome to Explorify! This presentation will help you introduce your colleagues to Explorify – we’ve given you all the key information but feel free to share your own experiences and successes! Using simple activities to develop curiosity, discussion and thinking skills in science and beyond!

Explorify will engage children's curiosity and encourage them to think, wonder and reason. You’ll see how in the next few slides! It follows your curriculum for science and enhances how children are thinking in a scientific way. They will be developing their thinking skills and other skills essential to scientific enquiry: observing; noticing similarities, differences and changes; measuring and quantifying; reasoning and explaining; problem solving and testing hypotheses; applying their understanding of phenomena. They will also have the opportunity to develop and practise skills from other subjects such as maths and English. Explorify is a totally FREE resource to support science teaching, both content and working scientifically.

Who can use Explorify? EVERYBODY! Confident staff Not-so-confident staff Visiting and supply teachers Support staff So, we know what it is, but how can we use Explorify? Try it as a way of introducing new topics and science ideas, and finding out what children already know! If you teach a weekly timetable, why not use Explorify activities between your lessons to keep learning alive? Or, if you block teach, then try using these short activities to dip back in and cement learning and mastery. Use the activities for formative assessment – prompt the children with phrases like ‘tell me more’, ‘why do you think that’, ‘what do you think?’, ‘Can you explain more about that idea?’

Explorify helps to… Inspire curiosity Develop thinking & reasoning Support enquiry Explorify will engage children's curiosity and encourage them to think, wonder and reason. You’ll see how in the next few slides! As well as applying maths skills, they will be developing their thinking skills and other skills essential to scientific enquiry: observing; noticing similarities, differences and changes; measuring and quantifying; reasoning and explaining; problem solving and testing hypotheses; applying their understanding of phenomena.

How can we use Explorify? Introduce new science topics Provide continuity between lessons Assess learning and progress Revisit prior learning Develop children’s skills in working scientifically Support cross-curricular learning So, we know what it is, but how can we use Explorify? Try it as a way of introducing new topics and science ideas, and finding out what children already know! If you teach a weekly timetable, why not use Explorify activities between your lessons to keep learning alive? Or, if you block teach, then try using these short activities to dip back in and cement learning and mastery. Use the activities for formative assessment – prompt the children with phrases like ‘tell me more’, ‘why do you think that’, ‘what do you think?’, ‘Can you explain more about that idea?’

This is the first page you’ll see after you complete the simple sign-up process. You’ll see that you can search the activities and/or filter based on science topic, year group, activity type and activity status (where you’ll see activities you have saved or marked as done). Click on the heart in the corner of each activity to save it to your list – It’ll turn green when you save it (like Perfect pinchers in the top row). Saved activities will appear in ‘My dashboard’ which we’ll have a look at later in the powerpoint. The activities come under different ‘types’ such as odd one out, zoom in zoom out, what if?, what’s going on?. You will see examples of these later. The images and videos have been carefully created and the questions will really get the children thinking! So, let’s try an activity together!

Let’s look at Weird Walkers Let’s look at Weird Walkers. This is an Odd One Out, one of the first types of activity you will discover – you’re probably familiar already with the concept, but do scroll down and have a look at the instructions. There’s lots of other useful information down there that we don’t want the children to see, but we’ll come to that in the next slides. So, how does this activity fit in to my curriculum? Firstly, it’ll help the class recall science from Years 1 and 2, then move on to Year 3 and 4 objectives: identify that humans and some other animals have skeletons and muscles for support, protection and movement; recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways. You can use all of Explorify’s activities to support working scientifically: here you’ll be identifying differences, similarities or changes related to simple scientific ideas and processes.

Here’s the quick and easy-to-digest information to run the activity Here’s the quick and easy-to-digest information to run the activity. Have a quick look at these if you’d like some prompts or ideas to keep the discussion going. Each activity has a background and ideas to take the learning further. It’ll tell you what the animals are and a little bit about them (just in case you’re not sure) and explain or clarify any tricky concepts. So, let’s see what happens when you’re ready to run the activity and click classroom view…

Weird walkers Here’s the classroom view. Run the activity with your colleagues! Ask them to talk about what they see, what the similarities are, then focus on the differences and, finally, ask everyone to decide on their odd one out and say why. You should get some good discussion and everyone will feel more confident about trying it with their children.

Now let’s have a quick look at a Zoom In Zoom Out activity Now let’s have a quick look at a Zoom In Zoom Out activity. The idea is simple – you’ll see a series of photographs of an everyday item at various levels of zoom. At each point ask the class what they see, what they think it might be and why. This will encourage pupils to look very carefully at the images, developing observational skills, reasoning and thinking. I’m sure you’ll all have lots of ideas what this is but you’ll have to sign up to see if you’re right!

15 minute wonders! You’ve tried an Odd One Out and seen a Zoom In Zoom Out, but that’s not all! Let’s look at some more activity types: What’s going on? – A video based activity that invites children to watch, think, notice changes and wonder why things are happening. Looking for detail, there’s slow-motion and time lapse imagery wherever it will help to develop understanding. What if? – A broad question designed to inspire a lively discussion. Use Plus Minus Interesting to help the class think about the question: good idea= thumbs up, not a good idea= arms folded and cross face, interesting idea=chin scratch, thoughtful face. Mystery bag – Use touch to explore what is in the bag. Once objects are identified, what do pupils think might connect them? Why?

Investigations with a twist! Everything we’ve talked about so far can be done in up to 15 minutes, but we have also created some slightly longer activities to support enquiry approaches. Big Question – Will support development of scientific inquiry skills and investigation using practical techniques. Mission survive – Activities to aid learning about the physical and behavioural characteristics of living things and how these contribute to their survival or extinction. Problem solvers – Encourages learners to apply their knowledge about the properties and characteristics of different materials, forces, sound/light/electricity and make something to solve a problem.

Welcome to ‘My dashboard’ Welcome to ‘My dashboard’! Here you’ll find all of the activities you’ve saved or marked as done. Move between the tabs to see your saved and done lists. You can also see our ‘Essential reading’ on the right hand side. This is a collection of our articles to help you with everything from inspiration for science teaching, CPD opportunities to help in using Explorify for assessment.

Next to the ‘Saved activities’ tab is the ‘Marked as done’ tab Next to the ‘Saved activities’ tab is the ‘Marked as done’ tab. Here you’ll see any activities you have run in the classroom and hit the ‘done’ button on. It’s a great way to keep track of the activities you’ve covered with your class and a perfect place to record any observations about your pupils as they participated in the activity.

Explorify in action! Watch our video If your colleagues need yet more evidence, show them this 2-minute video. Hyperlinked from picture to https://vimeo.com/196439113

Thank you and enjoy using Explorify! https://explorify.wellcome.ac.uk/ Once you get going there’s lots of support - you can always email explorify@wellcome.ac.uk for help or with any questions you might have (you’ll always reach a human!), or you can join the closed Facebook group and chat with other teachers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/explorifystaff/ What are you waiting for!?