Activating Students’ Science Process Skills During the Pandemic by Home Experiments through Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation (PIE) Iterative Learning Cycle

Overview

Because of the pandemic, various teaching and learning activities, including experiments, could not be done during school suspension. However, doing experiments helps to cultivate science process skills. Therefore, students in a class of Grade 8 did experiments at home to continue learning science process skills.

In this case study, students formed their groups and found topics that they were interested in to do home experiments through a planning, implementation, and evaluation (PIE) iterative learning cycle. First, students were asked to write objectives, investigate possible methods, find relevant information, narrow their scientific inquiry with justifications in planning their experiments and stating any safety concerns. Next, students carried out their work with the deployment of students for various steps, defining independent, dependent, and controlled variables of experiments and writing procedures and observations. Finally, students were asked to reflect on what they had learned in this experiment and suggest any further improvements in implementing similar experiments. Teacher gave written and verbal corrective feedback with positive reinforcement for any necessary modifications.