The 5 e's and Science Instruction

What's new?? Being an effective aka a great teacher is hard work. There’s always some new approach or newly worded approach to teaching to keep us on our toes…some of which we’re familiar with, and others not so much. Some of these tactics we hold on to, internalize and own and others we chose not to for varying reasons. The 5 E lesson planning tool, is one of those however, that I think we should have never let go of...

The 5 E's!!

Engagement	Object, event or question used to engage students. Connections facilitated between what students know and can do.
Exploration	Objects and phenomena are explored. Hands-on activities, with guidance.
Explanation	Students explain their understanding of concepts and processes. New concepts and skills are introduced as conceptual clarity and cohesion are sought.
Elaboration	Activities allow students to apply concepts in contexts, and build on or extend understanding and skill.
Evaluation	Students assess their knowledge, skills and abilities. Activities permit evaluation of student development and lesson effectiveness.

Adapted from Bybee, R.W. et al. (1989).

It was “first used as an inquiry lesson planning model in the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) program, a K-6 science program in the early 1970s, the early learning cycle model had 3 stages (exploration, invention, discovery). Using the learning cycle approach, the teacher "invents" the science concept of the lesson in the 2nd stage (rather than defining it at the outset of the lesson as in the traditional approach). The introduced concept subsequently enables students to incorporate their exploration in the 3rd stage and apply it to new examples. Many examples of learning cycles have been described in the literature (Barman, 1989; Ramsey, 1993).  The 5E Learning Cycle ( Bybee, 1989) is used in the new BSCS science programs as well as in other texts and materials.”

 

 

I’d say the 5 E model for lesson planning is an old tool that I believe a good number of us have been using in some capacity to plan lessons for our students, but probably not in the way aforementioned. Thinking back to college education courses, all of our lesson plans (which were nicely typed and presented accordingly) had to include 7 components. An objective, a motivation, a list of resources you plan to use, procedures you and the students will follow, a conclusion to wrap up your findings, an assessment and an extension activity for understandings to be extended/or applied to various situations. This model was used for all subject matters, leaving no place for inquiry. So what about the friends (what I call my students) who have questions stemming from prior knowledge and or life experiences…that may in turn shape the way they learn and conceptualize events in their future’s??

Science instruction, I believe, is in a metamorphic state. Instruction is moving strategically away from “Let’s do a lab to prove something we already know.” to “Let’s ask some questions and find some answers about something we’d like to know more about!” which already sounds more exciting!! Students are encouraged to prove and or refute their prior curiosities and conclusions about a subject, teachers ask students questions, instead of constantly giving answers. Students are promoted to own their answers, seek clarifications, test possible solutions and reach formidable conclusions and or reconciliations. Teachers act as guides and/or facilitator and students are pushed to take control of their own learning.

 

 

In my ever so cool Physics class last week we read an interesting chapter on Science instruction from the piece entitled “How Students Learn: Science in the Classroom” released by the Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers edited and compiled by M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Bransford, written by James Minstrel and Pamela Kraus.. The chapter was entitled Guided Inquiry in the Science Classroom, in short it was about an inquiry based unit plan done by Minstrel, a high school Physics teacher. The chapter began with a realization had by Minstrel while discussing a cart being pulled off the side of a table by the mass of a weight drawn over a pulley. He simply asked his students what they thought would happen and the answers, although given by students who based on the reading, should have known better, surprised and bewildered him. He even asks “What good is having my students know the quantitative relation or equation for gravitational force if they lack a qualitative understanding of force and the concepts related to the nature of gravity and its effects?” (p. 476).

 After this occurrence he decided to change his science lesson planning and overall delivery. He begins the unit discussed in the piece with a question about a bell jar. He posed this scenario and question to his students: “Suppose we put something on the scale and the scale reading is 10.0 lb. Now suppose we put a large glass dome over the scale, frame and all, and seal all the way around the base of the dome. Then, we take a large vacuum pump and evacuate all the air out from under the dome. We allow all the air to escape through the pump, so there is no air left under the glass dome. What would happen to the scale reading with no air under the dome? You may not be able to give a really precise answer, but say what you think would happen to the scale reading, whether it would increase, decrease, or stay exactly the same and if you think there will be a change, about how much? And briefly explain how you decided” (p. 479).
 

 

 

 

The pages that followed gave in depth descriptions of 4 hands-on activities that challenged his student’s notions about the relationships and differences between air and gravitational pull. He then built in an opportunity for his students to discuss their findings and make conclusions and an assessment to see how much his students really knew about the situation at hand. The final pages detailed the rest of the unit plan which gave more tactile scenario experiences that his students engaged in while working on answering the rest of the question the lesson began with.

 

Minstrel’s unit plan model, I believe, is an example of what those scientific flower children were looking for in science instruction over 40 years ago. Inquiry. In 5 E lesson plans, students are to engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and extend in a particular lesson plan sequence. In Minstrel’s lesson, he began by “engaging” his student’s prior knowledge and understandings with a scenario and a corresponding question. He then presented them with several hands on activities to help them answer the question he asked, this would serve as the “exploring” stage of the lesson. Students were then asked to “explain” their findings and new understandings in a class discussion, which he called the “Consensus Discussion and Summary of Learning” (p. 491). After this students were assessed on their findings, which could be interpreted as the “elaboration” step in the 5 E process, Minstrel asked his students to show him that they knew what they’d learned using assessment questions. In Minstrel’s lesson plan, after their assessment, the students were given the opportunity to extend their knowledge of their newly acquired/adjudicated information by engaging in several other related, but very different hands on activities. Finally he allowed a platform for his students to put all of this knowledge together in a sort of conceptual framework.

My friends engaging in a discussion with each other!!

 

So what’s the end result? Inquiry based, student centered learning, which allows students to address their preconceptions about certain phenomena in order to broaden their understanding of them and others related to it. The students in Minstrel’s class could now make sense of concepts they’d previously only skimmed the surface of before. “How Students Learn” suggests that students learn best under circumstances in which students' preconceptions are identified and addressed, and subsequent learning is monitored (p.512). The text goes on to propose that educators keep the following in mind when planning for science instruction: “students need opportunities to see where ideas come from, and they need to be held responsible for knowing and communicating the origins of their knowledge and students need opportunities to learn to inquire in the discipline.” (p. 512). An educator understood the needs of their students and adjusted their delivery to accommodate them.

 

Have you used the 5 E model today???

Barman, C. (1989). Making it work. Science Scope, 12(5), 28-31.
Bybee, R.W. et al. (1989). Science and technology education for the elementary years: Frameworks for curriculum and instruction. Washington, D.C.: The National Center for Improving Instruction.
Ramsey, J. (1993). Developing conceptual storylines with the learning cycle. Journal of Elementary Science Education, 5(2), 1-20.
Donovan, Suzanne M. & Bransford, John D. (2005). How Students Learn. Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers