P.O.E

For some reason whenever I hear the term POE I think of the Teletubbies, specifically the red on who is named Po.  While Teletubbies have some entertainment value, although it is very minor, these POE activities are definitely entertaining, even for a class of university students.

POE stands for Predict, Observe, Explain, and provides students the opportunity to play an active role in their science class. Students are presented with a few objects or supplies and asked to predict what will occur when the objects interact.  Once the predictions have been made, the students take part in the activity to see what happens and they observe what happens.  Next they explain what happened, why they thought that their prediction would happen, and they discuss what scientific concepts were present in the activity and use their observations to explain what forces and concepts were present.

My cooperative learning group titled our station Give Me A Hand and this is what it looked like.

What our station looked like

The task is to remove the gloves from the jar and the students are able to follow the instructions.  Next they observe whether or not they could remove the glove.  

Removing the glove

 Once every student in the group has had a chance to try, they are asked to explain what they observed.  They are then further questioned as to what happened and why that happened. This is a great activity that is easy to set up and I encourage you to try it and see what happens.  I won't tell you what happens so you can make your own predictions, then observe what happened, and then explain why that happened.