Bill Robertson June 9, 2005 NSTA Web Seminar Constructivism and the Learning Cycle Applied to Teaching Science

You’re going to teach your students the concept of kinetic energy. What is your first step?

Find an engaging activity having to do with kinetic energy and start with that. Carefully outline the concept you want to teach and what you want the students to understand when you’re done. Find a good lecture on the subject and start with that.

How do people learn best? With discovery learning. Students should mess around with materials until they discover various concepts. Lecture followed by lab experiments and lots of practice. Activities with a fair amount of structure, followed by explanations, followed by more structured activity.

A langit is a nice thing to have. It can keep you cool and it’s attractive. Bob owns the langit but he doesn’t own the frammets. Most people can handle one or two frammets, but have a difficult time stomaching more than two frammets at a time.

Quiz Does Bob own the frammets? Are langits attractive? If the sun were shining and you wanted to be cool, would a langit be a good thing to have? If you were throwing a party for 10 people, about how many frammets would you have at the party? If that party were for 100 people, would your answer to the previous question change? If so, how? Would you buy a frammet from Bob? How expensive is a langit?

What does “constructivism” mean? That people construct their knowledge of concepts, connecting new information to previous experiences. That scientists construct their view of the world. Rather than there being an objective reality for us to discover, we create our own reality. That self esteem problems are explained by the fact that we don’t acknowledge students’ prior conceptions and accept that prior knowledge, but rather try to change that prior knowledge.

So what exactly is constructivism as it applies to teaching? What should we do about it?

density = ? ?

mass volume

The Learning Cycle Explore Explain Elaborate (apply)

The Five E’s Engage Explore Explain Elaborate Evaluate

An example Give the students a bunch of golf balls and marbles. Have them apply different-strength forces to the objects and observe the results. Tell them exactly what activities to perform. Explore

Explain how forces, masses, and accelerations are related, using the results of the previous activity to introduce concepts. Explain

Elaborate Have the students construct balloon rockets, and use their knowledge of how forces, masses, and accelerations are related (F=ma) to explain what they observe.

You’re going to teach your students the concept of kinetic energy. What is your first step?

Find an engaging activity having to do with kinetic energy and start with that. Carefully outline the concept you want to teach and what you want the students to understand when you’re done. Find a good lecture on the subject and start with that.

How do people learn best? With discovery learning. Students should mess around with materials until they discover various concepts. Lecture followed by lab experiments and lots of practice. Activities with a fair amount of structure, followed by explanations, followed by more structured activity.

Once you find an appropriate activity, you can usually use it as is for either Explore or Explain. True False

It’s usually easy to find existing science activities that are categorized as Explore or Elaborate activities. True False

If you use a particular activity as an Explore activity one year, it won’t take much modification to use it as an Elaborate activity the next year. True False

For the Explanation part of the Learning Cycle, you can often just use the explanation provided in a textbook. True False

What do you do in the Engage and Evaluate stages of the Five E’s?

The goal is to explain the concept of density. Label the activities from 1 to 5. Label the Engage activity with a 1 Label the Explore activity with a 2 Label the Explain activity with a 3 Label the Elaborate activity with a 4 Label the Evaluate activity with a 5 Following are five activities. I've designed each one to be a different stage in the Five E model.

Explain what density is, meaning the mass of an object divided by its volume. Use lots of everyday examples of objects with different densities. Engage=1, Explore=2, Explain=3, Elaborate=4, Evaluate=5

Give teams of students about five objects, each with a different volume and weight. Ask the teams to order the objects according to either increasing or decreasing density. Have the teams share their results and explain why they ordered the objects the way they did. Discuss with the class. Engage=1, Explore=2, Explain=3, Elaborate=4, Evaluate=5

Weigh three objects in front of the class. Tell the students the measured volume of each object. Have the students create a written list of the objects in order of increasing density and submit those lists to you. Engage=1, Explore=2, Explain=3, Elaborate=4, Evaluate=5

Prepare a large, closed box, filled with packing peanuts or other light objects. Also get a small but very heavy object. Present both objects to the class and ask which one will weigh more. Then weigh both and demonstrate that the small object actually weighs more than the large box. Engage=1, Explore=2, Explain=3, Elaborate=4, Evaluate=5

Give teams of students five different objects. All should be in the shape of a cube, and the students should already know how to determine the volume of a cube. The objects should have different weights. Have the students weigh each object and determine the volume of each object. Ask the teams to look at their data and see if they can find a pattern in the data. Engage=1, Explore=2, Explain=3, Elaborate=4, Evaluate=5

Upcoming Web Seminars: NASA Robotics: Mars Missions Update June 16, 2005 NASA: Effects of Space Flight on Humans June 23, 2005 NASA Robotics July 13, :30 PM Eastern Time