CRUSH SCHOOL

5644 1st Avenue South Minneapolis, MN, 55419

I blog on Brain-Based Learning, Metacognition, EdTech, and Social-Emotional Learning. I am the author of the Crush School Series of Books, which help students understand how their brains process information and learn. I also wrote The Power of Three: How to Simplify Your Life to Amplify Your Personal and Professional Success, but be warned that it's meant for adults who want to thrive and are comfortable with four letter words.

Filtering by Category: Science

Unlocking the Unexplored: Creating a Common Learning Experience for Understanding Difficult Concepts

August 02, 2023  /  Oskar Cymerman

By using a real-world phenomenon at the beginning of a lesson, or a unit, or a series of lessons, teachers push students to undertake a journey of discovery - a journey that leads to students discovering on their own why and how this phenomenon happens. To this end, they are encouraged to collaborate as they seek and find answers to the questions they themselves generate when observing and analyzing the phenomenon.

But what should we do if the phenomenon itself is too hard for students to connect to or is too complex for students to break down?

When we encounter complex topics that may leave students overwhelmed and disengaged we can employ the power of exploration to spark curiosity, understanding, and confidence that they can indeed tackle the hardest of topics. A common learning experience can be such a tool to help your students unlock the secrets of challenging concepts.

Creating a Common Learning Experience for a Phenomenon

  1. Identify the Conceptual Roadblocks

    Before diving into a phenomenon that represents a difficult concept, it's crucial to understand the specific challenges your students may be facing with the concept. Identify the misconceptions or gaps in their understanding, and use this insight to tailor your common learning experience accordingly.

  2. Craft a Compelling Context

    Set the stage for the common learning experience by grounding the difficult concept in a real-life context that resonates with your students' interests and experiences. Whether it's a practical application, a thought-provoking problem, or a fascinating scenario, a relatable context fuels curiosity and motivation to dive deeper. At the end, students will be able to relate to the phenomenon you present to them.

  3. Introduce the Wonder of Exploration

    Share stories of famous scientists, inventors, or explorers who faced challenges and persevered through exploration. Check out this article that includes the failure and success stories of Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, and the Wright brothers for ideas. Encourage your students to view the difficult concept as an uncharted territory waiting to be explored, rather than an insurmountable obstacle and emphasize the thrill we all feel when our efforts pay off.

  4. Design Hands-on Activities and Give them the tools

    Hands-on investigations help unlock comprehension. Create interactive activities, experiments, or simulations that allow students to manipulate variables, observe outcomes, and draw their own conclusions. Give them the tools such as lab materials and encourage them to use online and other resources to investigate the concept actively.

    Check out this gas properties investigation I use to help chemistry students gain some background and understanding of gas properties.

  5. Encourage Questions and Hypotheses

    As they investigate, encouraging students to ask questions and formulate hypotheses about the difficult concept. Emphasize that it's okay not to have all the answers and to make mistakes, as exploration is a process of discovering of what we do not yet know.

  6. Make it Collaborative

    Learning is enriched through collaboration. When students work together, they support each other, share insights, make mistakes together, and collectively overcome obstacles. Encourage sharing of perspectives, discourse, peer teaching, and team problem-solving.

  7. Reflect and Connect

    Throughout the common learning experience, prompt students to reflect on their discoveries and connect them to real-world applications. Encourage them to draw parallels between the ideas they are discovering about the difficult concept and their everyday lives.

  8. See them and Celebrate Small Wins

    Be in the space with your students as they work through the problem. Acknowledge and celebrate the small wins you notice when they investigate. Positive reinforcement motivates students to persist, boosts their self-confidence in overcoming challenging concepts, and scores you major building relationships points.

    As a bonus, being in the space gives you the opportunity to help students by asking questions that lead them to the correct conclusions without giving the answers away.

Make it relevant first

Using a common learning experience tailored to the needs and interests of your students, even the most difficult concepts can become fun. By activating curiosity, using active learning, and promoting collaboration, the learning process can be transformed into captivating explorations into difficult ideas. The ensuing improved understanding of the concepts this challenging idea includes empowers students to persevere and gain confidence in their ability to conquer future challenges that will present themselves inside and out of the classroom.

So let’s make it relevant first by letting them unlock the unexplored for themselves.

Was this article relevant to you? If so, sign up for my Teaching Tips, Resources, & Ideas Newsletter to get the next one as soon as it drops. It’s totally free.

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categories / Science
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Phenomenon-Based Learning: How to Break Down Phenomena

July 29, 2023  /  Oskar Cymerman

The ultimate goal of Phenomenon-Based Learning (PhenBL) is to help students develop skills necessary to solve real-world problems.

To provide meaning and context, PhenBL does away with passive strategies such as lecturing or reading about frequently abstract and difficult-to-relate-to concepts in favor of guiding students in active discoveries of the skills and knowledge required to solve real-world problems.

Phenomenon-Based Learning classroom

In a Phenomenon-Based Learning classroom, teachers look for real-world phenomena that represent the main ideas of the lesson or unit and use these phenomena as starting points lessons or units. Then, students interact with these phenomena to “solve” them - they investigate and find patterns, contrasts, causes, effects etc.

These “phenomena solutions” are achieved when students design their own ways to study and explain the whys and the hows of the phenomenon - they use provided resources (books, articles, the Internet etc.) and create products, such as visual or physical models, simulations, and experiments.

Teachers may choose to use these student-generated products as measures of student learning (performance assessments) instead of traditional tests.

Such a series of lessons is called a storyline and while storylines may vary depending on the topic or discipline, the idea that each part of the storyline should be driven by student questions and investigations makes it crucial for students to have a solid grasp on the phenomenon that starts each storyline. To this end, students must learn how to break down phenomena.

Breaking Down a Phenomenon

In my article Where and How to Begin with Phenomenon-Based Learning, I used a High School Earth Science phenomenon I named How Do Different Minerals Form? to help me create a plan for learning, but I posed this question to students: Each made of carbon; a diamond is forever, but graphite not so much. Why? The reason for showing images of diamond and graphite - two minerals all students should be familiar with and know some facts about - was to start the process of students connecting that while diamond and graphite are made of the same element carbon, they are different due to the conditions they formed in.

I realize that while investigating students could choose to focus on figuring out the processes and conditions related to graphite and diamond only so I might have to add extension lessons to help students learn and understand other ways in which minerals form. However, starting with this phenomenon is advantageous in two ways. For one, students can relate to it easily. Two, it gets the ball rolling on a major concept that temperature and pressure are key factors that affect mineral formation.

However, most students will most likely not know the specifics about diamonds and graphites and learning that they are both made of the same stuff should arise their curiosity and motivation to find out why. This might prompt them to grab their tech and start Googling, and it’s great if they want to do so, but I implore you to stop them, because you do not want superficial learning. You want in-depth, super kick-ass understanding and this requires strategy.

Observe and Ponder Chart is so oP y’all

Click on the Image for a FREE Google Doc COPY of the Observe and Ponder Chart you can use in your classroom.

I use the Observe and Ponder (OP) chart to help students break down a phenomenon. In small groups, they compile the two lists. First, they brainstorm and write down all of the the observations they have collected about the phenomenon. I always make the phenomenon image/video available to students in the LMS (learning management system ex. Google Classroom, Schoology etc.) our school uses, so they can review it as they complete the activity.

In the second column, students write down any questions that come to mind about the phenomenon and the observations they’ve made. These questions help direct student investigations.

The goal of the Observe and Ponder activity is to teach students a strategic way of looking at different phenomena and ultimately to help them become better at investigating and solving problems.

Taking it further: Looking at Phenomena as a class

At this point, you may allow students to start their investigations, or, if you feel they’d benefit from peer and teacher feedback, you may want to facilitate a class discussion during which students share their observations and questions they’ve generated. This provides an additional scaffold - especially useful at the beginning of the school year - that allows students to see if they are on track.

Creating a class OP chart allows you to compile and combine observations

SHD (Subtle Hint Dropping) is an additional tool you can use to aid the phenomenon breakdown process. It is extra helpful when you find glaring omissions in the Ponder column or when working with younger students who experience more difficulty in converting observations into questions to investigate. Basically, point to the specific observation in the class OP chart and ask students if anything else comes to mind that may be important to look into. You may also ask them to make an inference, or guess the reason for this observation.

And if all fails, do a think-aloud during which you tell them what you’re looking for but you don’t just give them the answer - you demonstrate your thinking process step by step that got you to it.

Why Your Phenomenon-Based Learning Future is Bright

As students participate in PhenBL activities throughout the school year and become more comfortable with Phenomenon-Based Learning and gain more confidence in their ability to deconstruct phenomena (aka becoming more OP at school and life), you can remove the scaffolds and let students guide themselves and collaborate with others.

Handing control over to the students will require that you “be in the space” with them so you can scrutinize and support their work. Just make sure you’re kind in your guidance, you have fun, and you occasionally strike up a random conversation, because they’ll appreciate the small brain breaks this provides and they’ll find out that you’re human after all. They will also enjoy having you around.

Play your cards right and you’ll become the OG who’s pretty OP. And that’s a dub and a wrap.

Sign up for my Teaching Tips, Resources, & Ideas Newsletter to get the next PhenBL post when it drops. It’ll be about Creating a Common Learning Experience for Difficult Phenomena and is free.

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categories / Science, Earth Science, Chemistry
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids

Phenomenon-Based Learning: Guiding Student Investigations of Phenomena

July 26, 2023  /  Oskar Cymerman

Phenomenon-Based Learning (PhenBL) can be a game changer in the way students learn science and other subjects. When done right, PhenBL fosters deeper learning and the development of transferrable 21st Century skills our students can use to thrive in their future lives and economy.

However, Phenomenon-Based Learning requires careful consideration and preparation.

First, you need to plan out the core idea and the supporting facts students need to learn.

Second, you need to choose an appropriate phenomenon for your PhenBL lesson.

Third, you need to make sure student investigations into this phenomenon lead them to learning what they need to learn. This is where you, the teacher, comes in and this is what this article is about.

Phenomenon First… then what?

In the last post, I used a High School Social Studies phenomenon - the Omaha Beach D-Day Landing movie clip from Saving Private Ryan accompanied by this question: 2,400 US soldiers died storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. Why was the US willing to enter WWII and sacrifice so many lives in mid-1944 after staying out of the war for nearly 5 years? The main purpose of using this phenomenon is to lead students to discovering and learning why the US entered WWII, other than the standard “Pearl Harbor, duh!” (final straw) answer.

Here are the next steps I would take to set up student investigation into the phenomenon:

  1. Ask students to make claims and write down questions related to these claims: Working in small groups, ask students to compile two lists. First, they write down a list of possible reasons that might answer the phenomenon question using logic and prior knowledge only. Second, students go through the list and write down any questions that come to mind related to each reason. Ask them not to use their textbook or technology to look things up yet.

  2. Facilitate a class discussion: Ask groups to share their claims. To aid this process and avoid superficial responses you might want to use a few thought-provoking questions such as: What do you know about US participation in WWII? and How did the war affect the US and its citizens prior to D-Day?

  3. Create a class concept map: As students share their claims, capture these ideas and questions by writing something like: Possible Reasons for US Entering WWII in the center of the class board and adding student provided claims around. Combine similar claims and stick to 3-5 claims including 1-2 false claims students will have a chance to debunk while investigating later. Then, claim by claim, ask students to volunteer some questions each brings to mind.

Phenomenon Brainstorming Concept Map

The completed concept map provides a framework for student investigations and can serve as a scaffold you use at the beginning of the school year and remove as students become more comfortable and proficient with planning their own investigations, which ultimately leads to them becoming more self-directed; a valuable life and work skill.

Now that the general plan for the student exploration into the phenomenon and the topics relevant to it is hashed out, it is time to turn it over to the students. I always have my Earth and Space Science students work in groups of 4-5 as I rotate from group to group to check on their progress, keeping the core idea and the supporting facts in mind (or on a sheet of paper) to help students regain focus should they stray too far from the lesson objectives.

As students investigate using online resources - we have a class set of textbooks we almost never use - they find evidence to support and debunk the claims they previously made. Then, they explore further to answer the class-generated questions related to each claim and the questions they must ask and answer to explain their claims in depth. To ensure students did deep, I ask questions that force students to explain the whys and hows of the whats they are investigating and lead them to connecting the phenomenon to the core idea.

Phenomenon-Based Learning involves creating a storyline. The phenomenon begins the story and everything that follows is scripted in a way to lead to the desired end - meaningful learning and skill building through real-life problem solving. The teacher is the script writer, the director, and the editor, and, yes - that’s a lot of hats to wear, but if you’ve been in the teaching game for a while you’d expect nothing less.

Did you find this post helpful? The next one will dive into Breaking Down Phenomena to make student explorations easier. Sign up for my Teaching Tips, Resources, & Ideas Newsletter to get it when it drops. It’s totally free.

BOOKS & TOOLS

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sale
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$8.00 $16.00
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$5.00
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PhenBL 16-Slide Professional Development Interactive Presentation
sale
PhenBL 16-Slide Professional Development Interactive Presentation
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categories / Science
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids

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