The 5 E Lesson Plan

 

Every time, I've moved to a new school, I've been told to turn in my lesson plans on Monday morning for the week.  Most of the time, I ask about the format and usually, they didn't bother having a specific request so I've done a bunch of research. Today, I thought I'd look at the 5 E lesson plan.

The 5 E's stand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate so that students are lead to deeper understanding of the material. This method was based on the process used by scientists and it became part of the educational scene back in the late 1980's. Time to look at each step of the way.

Engage, is where the teacher poses a question, an object, or a situation that has students looking on the topic while helping them activate prior knowledge.  In math, this might look like a notice and wonder, a number talk, or the beginning of a 3-act task.  When you do a notice and wonder, the answers do not have to be in mathematical language since you are interested in students to participate.

Explore is the next stage.  In this stage, students and the teacher dig into the topic so they have some common experiences that can be drawn upon when explaining a new concept or topic.  This might be done through  an activity with manipulatives, or a video set up they can watch. 

Explain comes after explore. Although this is where you might think the teacher takes over but this is where the students share their observations or what they learned about the concept or topic. Instead, this is where the teacher supports the student's observations with formal language. This is also where teachers might address misconceptions that arise.

Elaborate is where students have the opportunity to extend their thinking and transfer thinking to new thinking.  This is also the stage where students work through their misconceptions, and work in groups for discussions that help extend their thinking. 

Evaluate is the final step where students and the teacher assess student learning. Formal assessment should occur throughout the whole process but there should be summative assessment at the end.  One way is to have students return to the original engage stage where they look at the original notice and wonder to see if they can apply the mathematical concept and vocabulary to it.

Today, I just touched on the 5E lesson plan.  I've used it before when I did hyperdocs and it made it easy to set up the whole lesson from start to finish.  I don't use it as much right now because of the range of grades I teach.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.