Important Points about Explanation Phase:
All the lecture/discussion must take into account and flow from what the students did during exploration. In other words, this is not the time for the teacher to simply go through a previously prepared power point lecture on a specific topic. Rather, it is the time to work through the information that students gathered during Exploration and use it to arrive at concepts that the lesson is supposed to teach.
Have students first present or share what they discovered/observed/gathered during Exploration. Ask them questions that will make them think about the information they have generated.
Maintain an interactive, negotiating kind of environment in which students are actively involved in making meaning of the information being dealt with, rather than passively receiving information being dispensed by the teacher.
The goal of the Explanation phase is to develop an understanding of topics that the lesson was designed to teach, in the context of lingering questions, problems, or issues relevant to real life. Once this understanding is developed, students can now be invited to apply or use this understanding to a new situation or solve a new (but related) problem. This takes the lesson into the Elaboration phase.