Everything here is general advice I would recommend from an examiner's perspective, but in all likelihood your teacher will be the one marking your folio, and since Art is subjective at the best of times, it's worth (nicely) pestering him/her until they give you some guidelines. Presumably they'll have their own preferences even if they're happy to leave most of the details to you, so check with them just to make sure you're on the right track in their eyes.
For starters, your folio is less like one linear process from point A to point B and more like... a tree. You start with your key idea (=trunk) which then branches out into many different areas (=branches.) For each section there are different frameworks and concepts you can explore, including all the different forms and mediums you can use (=twigs) and the actual practical component of making artworks and trials comes last (=leaves.)
However, a tree with one leave per twig and one twig per branch would be a pretty weird looking tree, so you should endeavour to have plenty of exploration each time you start on a new conceptual avenue.
But there should still be some sense of progress made throughout your folio, even though there are many different branching options (ie. you might experiment with paint for ages, but then later decide you want to do a drawing, or a multimedia piece for your final instead, so you'll then go on to experiment in those areas.)
For the sections that you've outlined:
Explore: this is basically just research - google artists you like, take inspiration from the word around you, visit galleries, take photos, compile your theoretical and practical readings, and this will give you a theoretical basis to draw from later.
Develop: here you start to integrate your research (which might just be, say, a picture of a pretty butterfly) with your actual artistic process (ie. drawing the butterfly, messing with a coloured photo on Photoshop, isolating sections and jsut painting half a wing over and over again.) It's really an extension of your exploration, and you can always integrate more later, so these two steps should be fairly intertwined.
Refine: fancy word for 'do stuff heaps of times and change tiny little things each time.' Not sure what colour the dress in your painting should be? TRIAL ALL THE COLOURS! Take 4 or 5 pages of your folio and devote them to making minute changes in the colour scheme, then in your annotations you can comment on each small change
eg. 1. 'This shade of red has a much darker tone and hence gives the dress a more sinister edge with the fabric looking like it's slightly bloodsoaked.' 2. '
This shade of red is slightly lighter and gives the dress a plastic-like shine, drawing more attention to other parts of the image instead.'
Evaluate: give your opinion on what you're doing. Your folio should be like a constant commentary on your development throughout the year. So for the above example, you might say 'Because I want viewers of my piece to concentrate on the figure's face and not so much on her attire, I think I'll opt for a lighter, almost watercolour shade of red for the dress so as not to overpower the intricate facial features...'
Assuming you've gone through the four frameworks in class, you should be utilising most of those (but primarily the Formal and Personal for most people, unless you're doing something notably Cultural or Contemporary) for your annotations.
Hope that helps clear things up, let me know if you need any more clarification
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