Eliciting ideas about the phenomenon

Need more information? Click on this icon throughout the page for more details!

The second stage of MBI is the first enacted in the classroom with students. It involves introducing the anchoring phenomenon and driving question, eliciting and making public students' initial ideas and experiences that may help them develop initial explanations of the phenomenon through the creation of an initial public record, and the construction and sharing of initial models of the phenomenon based on those current ideas. This stage usually takes the first one or two days of the unit.

As you explore the different sections below, examples are provided from two different units: Lyme disease (high school) and The Colorado Plateau (middle school). You can use the arrows to move between the two examples.

PART A. INTRODUCE THE ANCHORING PHENOMENON AND DRIVING QUESTION

The goal here is to introduce the anchoring phenomenon in a way that leaves the students excited to find out the answer! This part ends with framing the unit by providing the driving question. The followings are examples (slide for another example):

Need help?

PART B. ELICIT STUDENTS' INITIAL IDEAS, EXPERIENCES, AND HYPOTHESES WHILE CREATING AN 'INITIAL HYPOTHESES LIST' PUBLIC RECORD

Here the goal is to bring out students initial ideas and experiences they may have with the phenomenon or a related phenomenon. The ideas are important resources for moving forward in the unit. We ask the students to develop initial hypotheses (initial explanations) and keep track of these with a public record.

Need help?

PART C. CONSTRUCT AND SHARE INITIAL GROUP MODELS

In this part, the students choose an initial hypothesis to work on through creating an initial model as a group. As in all modeling, the most important part is the discussion about what will be in the model and why. We end with the vital step of sharing out the groups' models for others to learn from.