Phenomena-Driven Learning: Effectively Using Natural Phenomena in Science Instruction

In this blog post, Savvas author, Dr. Jesse Wilcox explains how science educators can encourage students to wonder about the natural-occurring events, or phenomena, that occur in their everyday lives, and how that wonder will lead to more engagement in their learning and ultimately a deeper understanding of science.

My grandparents were fond of recalling when I was maybe one or two years old, and I would frequently point up to the sky and exclaim, “The Moon! The Moon!”

As I got a bit older, my curiosity about the Moon shifted and deepened. I remember wondering why the Moon seemed to change shape and how craters got on the Moon, but we didn’t see them very much on Earth.

Even recently, I have found myself looking at the Moon in wonder. I took my wife and kids to the eclipse in Indiana in April 2024, which was an amazing experience. And just the other night, I found myself looking up at it lost in thought.

What is it about the Moon that draws people to it?

I think it’s perhaps one of those natural experiences that instills a sense of wonder. In his book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, Robert Kegan points out there are two kinds of wonder: wondering about and wondering at. Wondering about something involves asking questions and being curious. In contrast, wondering at something is that sense of awe we sometimes feel.

Naturally occurring events or objects, such as the Moon, are known as phenomena, and phenomena can be a powerful tool in science instruction because they spark wonder when we take notice of them.

I think science educators have an opportunity to help our students wonder about and wonder at the natural world by strategically using phenomena in our classrooms. By encouraging students to wonder about and at phenomena, we can help them become more engaged, which will lead to a deeper understanding of the science we teach them.

How Can We Use Phenomena in Science Education?

Much like my moon example, natural phenomena surround our everyday lives, but we may not always pay much attention to them. Therefore, including phenomena in instruction affords teachers the opportunity to help draw students’ attention to the real world and help them better understand science.

Phenomena can be used as a “hook” only in the Engage phase of the 5E Model of Instruction — an inquiry-based teaching framework designed to promote active learning and student understanding that includes five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate — however, this approach is limited (Penuel et al., 2019). Instead, phenomena are more effective when teachers strategically use phenomena throughout a lesson.

Teachers can use phenomena in two ways: the “Anchoring Phenomena” and “Everyday Phenomena.”

Anchoring phenomena are any fascinating natural phenomena that are sure to capture students’ interest, spark questions, and inspire investigation, such as why weather is different in different parts of the world. They tend to be broader and are often introduced at the beginning of a unit. They provide a foundation for learning that is purposefully revisited throughout the learning process. In contrast, everyday phenomena, such as why condensation forms on the outside of a glass of water when it’s hot, tend to be narrower and connect more directly to the science concept being learned within the 5E model. Everyday phenomena help provide varied examples throughout the learning process.

How Are Phenomena Related to the Next-Generation Science Standards Three-Dimensional Learning?

Anchoring phenomena and everyday phenomena can set the stage for science teachers to create a three-dimensional classroom — a teaching environment that integrates three elements of learning: science and engineering practices (SEP), crosscutting concepts (CCC), and disciplinary core ideas (DCI). When these elements are present in the science classroom, they can help teachers promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills and help students apply science to real-world situations.

Three-dimensional learning is part of the framework created by the National Research Council in 2012 that provides an evidence base for the Next Generation Science Standards.

When students are deeply engaged in phenomena, they are likely engaging in many science and engineering practices, including asking questions, analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations, and obtaining information.

Similarly, students also engage with many crosscutting concepts including looking for patterns, considering cause and effect, and thinking about stability and change. In this sense, phenomena go hand in hand with three-dimensional learning. However, teachers have an important role in effectively using phenomena in a three-dimensional science classroom.

Considerations for Effectively Using Phenomena in Our Classrooms

While phenomena can set the stage for three-dimensional learning, teachers have a crucial role in making phenomena-driven science instruction effective. This section will explore considerations for effective phenomena-driven instruction.

Finding Phenomena in Everyday Experiences

Regardless if we are using anchoring phenomena or everyday phenomena, the phenomena we use in our instruction don’t need to be flashy (Barrett-Zahn, 2024). Indeed, common phenomena can be used in powerful ways.

For example, using a mirror is an everyday experience, yet students rarely think about how a mirror works in a scientific way.

In Minds of Our Own, Harvard and MIT graduates were asked if they would see more of themselves, less of themselves, or the same amount if they moved closer to a mirror placed on a flat wall. While almost everyone agrees you’d see more of yourself if you step backward, you actually see the same amount.

Using a mirror as a phenomenon isn’t flashy, but it can be powerful.

Introduce the Phenomena, Then the Academic Vocabulary

Phenomena should not be intimidating for our students (Mahmoud, 2024). One way to ensure phenomena aren’t intimidating is to delay using scientific vocabulary until later in the lesson. When we allow students to use their language and their experiences, this reduces the intimidation factor and also increases equity in our classrooms.

I recently observed a pre-service teacher who had students observing celery. The celery had been split in half where one half was in red food coloring and water and the other half was in blue food coloring and water. During the first period, the pre-service teacher used words such as transpiration, xylem, vascular plants, and water transport system. Afterward, we got a chance to debrief the lesson and she realized students may not know all of those words.

In the next lesson, she started by asking students what they observed and how they could observe the celery closer. Students got out stereoscopes and were excited to learn that some sort of “vein” was carrying the food coloring and water up the plant and that the colors weren’t mixing. The students were excited to learn that those veins were called xylem and were responsible for carrying the water.

The difference between the excitement in the lessons was striking. When the experiences come before the vocabulary, students are less intimidated and more focused on the phenomena.

Phenomena Should Be Developmentally Appropriate

While many naturally occurring phenomena can create a sense of wonder in learners of any age, not all phenomena are developmentally appropriate for students.

For example, a common activity in the elementary classroom is the milk-and-dish-soap experiment. Milk is placed in a shallow bowl and then drops of food coloring are added. Then, a cotton swab with dish soap is put into the milk. The result is a swirling of colors that is unexpected and sort of beautiful.

The phenomenon is alluring because it’s cheap, interesting, and fun. Yet, the causes of the phenomenon are surface tension and polarity (Scientific American, 2014), which are scientific concepts that are more suited for high school than elementary school.

Importantly, elementary students can engage deeply in scientific phenomena. Even at the earliest grades, students can create sophisticated explanations of natural phenomena (NRC, 2012). The trick, of course, is ensuring that the phenomena being explored can directly be observed by young children and match the concepts we are working to help them understand.

Phenomena Can Come in Many Modalities

Given natural phenomena occur all around us, teachers can engage students with phenomena in a variety of ways, including videos, hands-on activities, and demonstrations. Regardless of the modality chosen, representations that are closest to the real thing tend to work better (Olson, 2008; Wilcox & Rose, 2022).

Other considerations such as safety, time, scale, and cost also impact which modality a teacher might choose. For example, when teaching the moon phases to middle school students, I often asked students to observe the Moon before I taught the Moon phases (MS-ESS1-1). Yet, getting all of my students to actually observe the Moon at night could be challenging. .

Luckily, NASA puts together a Moon Phases video that they update each year. Students can observe how the Moon phases change over the course of the month in about 30 seconds without having to go outside after dark.

Using a video helped me ask students questions about patterns they noticed (the crosscutting concept), and we used it to launch into making a model (the science and engineering practice) using flashlights and a foam ball to explain why the moon phases occur (Kruse & Wilcox, 2009).

While having students observe the actual moon in the sky themselves has a great deal of value, the video allowed us to observe the phenomena together and all at once.

Follow Phenomena-Based Learning with Open-Ended Questions

One of the most important aspects of phenomena-driven instruction really doesn’t have anything to do with phenomena. Instead, it’s what is done afterward with questions.

When teachers ask open-ended questions, students are much more likely to be engaged, curious, and invested (Clough, 2007; Wilcox et al., 2024). Further, open-ended questions can help teachers understand and scaffold students’ thinking (Clough, 2007).

In a second-grade activity about erosion (Wilcox et al., 2021), my colleagues and I had students observe what happens when we pour water on soil and in an aluminum pan that is sloped downward. We asked students questions such as:

• What patterns did you observe?
• Why might the soil have moved more than the rocks?
• How could we design a way to keep all of the materials from moving as much?

These questions helped us guide students to engage in an engineering activity where they designed a way to prevent erosion.

Encourage Students to Ask Questions About Phenomena

While questions are a powerful strategy teachers can use, having students ask questions is an important aspect of phenomena-driven instruction. Teachers can help students generate questions by using question prompts(think-pair-share) and working together to create “driving questions.”

When I taught biology, I brought in pieces of tree bark that had lichens growing on them for students to observe. Students used stereoscopes and observed different samples. We then did a think-pair-share where students came up with questions about the lichens. After students had a list of about 12 questions, I highlighted some of the questions and asked students what was similar about them.

Through some discussion and prompting, students realized they were questions that they could observe or test. These questions included:

• Where do lichens grow?
• Do they grow on just trees?
• Do they grow equally on the tree?
• Do they grow on all species of trees?
• How many species of lichens are around here?

Students then went outside to investigate their questions. When we returned, we discussed what they had found out.

Students could then ask questions they wanted to know more about. We talked about how a lichen was formed via a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria as well as different growth forms of lichens including crustose, foliose, and fructose.

Students then went back to the samples and worked to see if they could identify different species and found about 10 different species just outside of our classroom!

When the Teacher Shows Excitement, the Students Will Follow

The above considerations all help students wonder about scientific phenomena. However, we also want students to wonder at them as well.

One way to help students wonder at is to model this for them. While looking excited can be difficult if you have done the same lesson four times in a row, it’s important that the students later in the day get to experience wondering at something just as much as the students earlier in the day.

I have found being excited about this group of students’ learning has helped me to maintain my excitement. My time management has also sometimes gotten in the way of my students wondering at phenomena. I have to remind myself when my students are captivated to show them the phenomena again. I have to let them enjoy the joy. Science is filled with wonder, and our students should get to experience it.

Use Phenomena to Help Students Connect to Science

Using phenomena instruction can be a powerful way for students to connect the science they are learning in the classroom to the real world.

When students are wondering about and wondering at the phenomena, teachers can leverage that wonder to help students understand science three-dimensionally. Indeed, with engaging phenomena, students are ready to ask questions (SEP), explore patterns (CCC), and want to learn more about scientific concepts (DCI).

If you aren’t sure about how to get started, it’s okay! The key is just to start. The phenomenon you use may not be perfect, but you can always adjust it over time.

You may not always know how to integrate the phenomena into your lessons, but you can work toward asking effective questions and making strategic connections back to it. The Criteria for Evaluating Phenomena checklist from the NSTA can also help you get started.

These criteria include:

• The phenomenon connects with the three dimensions of the NGSS standard.
• The phenomenon is observable by students (or has a data set).
• The phenomenon is likely comprehensible to students.
• The phenomenon is suitably attention-getting, relevant, thought-provoking, and motivating.
• The benefits of using the phenomenon outweigh the financial costs and time commitments.

By using scientific phenomena, we can help students continue to wonder about and wonder at the natural world.

References

• Barrett-Zahn, E. (2024). Phenomena-Driven Science Instruction. Science and Children, 61(5), 5-6.
• Clough, M. P. (2007). What is so important about asking questions?. Iowa Science Teachers Journal, 34(1), 2-4.
• Kegan, R. (1998). In Over Our Heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press.
• Kruse, J., & Wilcox, J. (2009). Conceptualizing Moon phases: Helping students learn how to learn. Science Scope, 32(5).
• Mahmoud, R. (2024, November 6-9). The Power of Yeast. [Presentation]. National Science Teaching Association National Conference. New Orleans, LA.
• National Research Council. (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. National Academy of Sciences.
• Olson, J. K. (2008). The science representation continuum. Science and Children, 46(1), 52.
• Penuel, W. R., Turner, M. L., Jacobs, J. K., Van Horne, K., & Sumner, T. (2019). Developing tasks to assess phenomenon‐based science learning: Challenges and lessons learned from building proximal transfer tasks. Science education, 103(6), 1367-1395.
• Scientific American. (2014). Surfactant Science: Make a Milk Rainbow. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surfactant-science-make-a-milk-rainbow/
• Wilcox, J., Kruse, J., & Decker, S. (2021). Exploring the STEM Landscape: Integrating the Natures of STEM into Elementary Earth Science. Science and Children, 58(6), 30-37.
• Wilcox, J., & Rose, A. (2022). Visualizing Habitats. Science and Children, 60(1), 26-31.
• Wilcox, J., Zavalza Flores, S., Bruns, M., & Nolting Dredge, S. (2024). Sparking Students’ Curiosity: Embedding Strategies to Promote Curiosity Alongside Teaching Static Electricity. Science Scope, 47(4), 30-36.