8/18/2023 0 Comments Vital phenomena definitionThis sort of question, albeit tragic, makes the world of chemistry relevant and stirs questions in our students’ minds. Have there been recent discoveries around the main idea you are wanting them to grasp? Is there a question that can address the discovery that could be embedded into the phenomenon? For instance, the question “Should chemical warfare be used and how does it work?” could be posed. Make the questions culturally-relevant to them and to their social identities. We need to shape our questions around their lives and interests. Keep current with their music, what they are watching on television, and with the influencers they are following. Tie the phenomena to those interests so as to pull them into your unit or lesson. When planning your phenomena-based questions, always consider the interests of your students gleaned from the beginning of the school year. But what happens at the cellular level? How does healing occur?” Here is your segue into mitosis, driven by student questions where they “uncover” the process of mitosis due to your arousing their curiosity. Now, what? Obviously, you bandage yourself or get stitches. The knife slips and slices your index finger. When we pose questions like “You are fixing veggies to eat by chopping them. ![]() Schooling should not be a linear process.Įducation should not be merely about training the next generation of workers. If we only structure our classes in mundane ways, no wonder they are not engaged. Remember, they play complex video games that encourage problem solving, divergent thinking, and detailed storylines. In biology, why should students learn about mitosis if we merely begin with a definition of it, the phases, and the overall process? Sounds ho-hum, right? Teenagers are busy individuals. If a phenomenon relates directly to our students’ lives, then all the better. By beginning our units or a lesson with an engaging phenomenon-based question, we enhance our chances of capturing our students’ attention without their attention, no learning can begin. If you begin a unit about molecular motion with a lecture, the students soon drift away to videos on YouTube on their phones, taking Tik Tok videos of themselves, or, for the most part, being disengaged. Think about the Engage portion of the 5E learning cycle. Phenomena serve as anchors for our teaching. Being curious, posing questions, and being skeptical should not end at graduation, but continue on in our students’ lives. By infusing phenomena into our science experiences, we can promote a scientifically-literate populace who are life-long learners, continuing to question the world around them. “There are no foolish questions, and no man (sic) becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions,” stated Charles Proteus Steinmetz, an electrical engineer responsible for the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Phenomena should be the foundation of our science teaching-a springboard for curiosity. ![]() Vocabulary words make no connection if there are no guiding questions to provide context. Instead of beginning a unit of study with dry, dusty vocabulary, we must pique our students’ interests with a question. Do people really behave differently during a full moon?.Why is there condensation on my glass during the summer?.When did humans first determine we need water to survive?.Phenomena are those entities that are observable and can be phrased as guiding questions, such as: The NGSS stresses phenomena and their role in our science teaching. As Edith Wharton said, “Beware of monotony it’s the mother of all deadly sins.” How, as science teachers, do we ensure monotony is an unwelcome visitor to our classrooms? One answer is by having a phenomenon-driven science classroom. I want to reawaken the curiosity that school often drums out of them. Eleanor RooseveltĬuriosity is one of my favorite words and a theme that guides my teaching at all times. I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
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