Learning Cycle: Chemistry Essay (Article)

Balancing Chemical Equations

In the first activity, the information is introduced at the beginning – Model 1: Hydrogen and oxygen react to form water. There are no pre-activity questions that are implied to examine and explore the data. In this way, the learning phase of Exploration is missed in the given activity.

In the following section, a student needs to answer the questions about the reactants and products represented in the scheme, and the answers require the application of critical thinking and analysis skills. Thus, the questions from 1 to 12 belong to the Concept Invention phase. It is required to explain the answers by using analysis and evaluation.

On the third sheet of the chemical study activity, a new additional term is introduced – it provides new information for answering the questions in the following section. The following five questions (13-22) are created to test the received knowledge of the students; therefore, they are at the phase of Application. For answering these questions, one needs to be able to implement the provided information in the new context and make inferences.

The given activity exactly follows the learning cycle in a consistent way. The arrangement of questions and terms according to the phases of the learning cycle facilitates the students’ absorption of new materials.

How Much Is Too Much?

The given activity follows the learning cycle as well. First of all, it commences with the pre-activity questions that are related to the Exploration phase when a student needs to apply the knowledge to gather information and conduct some examinations to give the answers.

Later on, a new term is introduced that is represented in Model 1. The Concept Invention phase follows after it in the Critical Thinking Questions section. The section consists of 9 questions that require the application of analytical and estimation skills from students. There are several multiple-answer questions that are represented in this section for answering which a student needs to contrast, compare, and evaluate the given information.

On the third sheet, a new term is introduced again in Model 2. And the Critical Thinking Questions section continues from question 10 to 14. It possible to say that the phase of Concept Invention is repeated in this activity twice – the students need to answer the questions about the newly introduced material by applying the same set of skills.

Nevertheless, the activity arrangement evolves in correspondence with the learning cycle; the Application phase goes right after the Concept Invention phase. In the Practice section, the students have to answer the questions based on the knowledge adopted in the lesson. They need to develop comprehensive replies and apply the introduced terms in the new contextual situations.

Conclusion

Although usually the terms are introduced after the second phase of the learning cycle, new information in the assessed activities is represented before and after the Invention phase. And in the second activity, the Concept Invention phase is divided into two parts by the term introduction. It can be considered a small deviation from the commonly accepted form of cycle. The rest of the sections are arranged according to the learning cycle organization rules.

Table: Balancing Chemical Equations.

Table: How Much Is Too Much?