Curiosity Factor #4: Anchoring

In the movie, The Martian, rescue attempts are hampered because (as scientists explain) there are only particular windows to launch a craft from Earth to Mars and these windows are approximately 2 years apart. Why is this? Why can’t we just launch any time we want and aim at Mars? Click the link below to explore this question in a simulation. Use the buttons to the right to change the date and click the yellow launch button to try and land the spacecraft on Mars. If you miss, change the date and keep trying until you achieve success.

https://interactives.ck12.org/simulations/physics/journey-to-mars/app/index.html

Anchoring is a technique of beginning a lesson with a video, demonstration, photo, story, experiment, phenomenon, or other curiosity-inducing activity. Typically, the activity is directly correlated with the learning, but recall from the Research on Curiosity blog post that initiating a state of curiosity prepares a brain for learning even if the learning is not connected to the curiosity-enhancing activity. The Mars activity has nothing to do with this article, but it now has your brain primed with curiosity.

Many teachers are already familiar with this technique as English teachers prepare students for reading a chapter by giving them historical background, an engineering teacher begins a unit with an engineering challenge, a social studies teacher has students role-play a famous court decision, or a science teacher does an inquiry experiment. Recall that the second step in the 7-E Inquiry Lesson plan is to “Engage” the students. “The New Teacher’s Companion” by Gini Cunningham calls this phase “Pulling Students into the Excitement of Learning” and I LOVE that description.

The Next Generation Science Standards are based on the foundation of “Phenomenon-Based Learning.” Phenomena are used in two ways in an NGSS lesson. In the beginning, the phenomenon is used to anchor the lesson and engage the students. In the end, a phenomenon can be used to test the student’s ability to explain the science behind the phenomenon as a practical assessment. There are numerous websites filled with videos, animations, and photos that science teachers can use as anchor and practical assessment phenomena.

A research and corporate learning management group called Valamis showed that phenomenon-based learning (PhBL) increases performance even in online classes. Before their conversion to PhBL, their online classes had a pass rate of 49%. Two years after converting to PhBL, the pass rate shot up to 70% and grades in the courses went up as well. 

Beyond just anchoring and assessment, understanding the phenomenon can turn into a self-guided constructivist learning activity on its own. The entire lesson can be centered around students investigating a phenomenon and presenting their learning at the end. For example, when middle school Language Arts students are learning the Common Core Standard, “Achieve an effective balance between researched information and original ideas,” they can be given a variety of news websites to peruse and categorize the articles by Editorial, Opinion, Factual, or Feature articles by analyzing the percentage of researched information and original ideas. Students can explore the topic using high-interest articles, discussing their thoughts with classmates, and presenting to the class their conclusions. Then, throughout the lesson, the teacher can refer back to those articles to demonstrate and/or assess what is being learned.

Phenomena are a great way to anchor a lesson, engage students, and spark curiosity. Just like the simulation at the beginning of this post, if we launch into a lesson too soon without setting the right conditions first, then we miss our target. Ha! I did tie the lesson back to the anchor phenomenon!