Exploring Through The 5 E's

The 5 E's are vital in a lesson plan and in a classroom. Teachers should be aware of these 5 aspects when implementing an inquiry lesson. Let me first start off with talking about what is consisted of the 5 E's. According to Enhancing Education, "The 5 E's is an instructional model based on the constructivist approach to learning, which says that learners build or construct new ideas on top of their old ideas." When students are exploring through the 5 E's they are tapping in on their prior knowledge and using that as a "crutch" to the lesson. Wait, but what are the 5 E's? Well I'll tell you, the 5 E's include: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. These 5 attributes should be included in your inquiry lesson to help the students build their knowledge. Another attribute that the 5 E's helps are cognitive skills. When going through each E, it helps the students develop a higher order of thinking according to the Bloom's Taxonomy Pyramid. All of these E's have a different aspect, but they all come together at the end. Breaking down each E is the best way to explain these different aspects. The first E that I will begin with is the Engage.
Engage section should always be the first E when implementing a lesson. This helps you make connections between what the students learned before and what they are learning now. The engage portion also introduces the problem or aspect that needs to be solved. An example of this was our group introducing the Web quest to our second graders. We gave the students a problem to solve and this helped us/them begin their lesson. Through this portion the students should be asked a question and this should get them to start thinking about the possible answers. This is where students "Become mentally engaged in the concept, processes, and skills" (Enhancing Education, 1). Also this section is important to bring in students prior knowledge on the subject, either by bringing up questions that were asked in the direct lesson or what the students should already know. After introducing all of these aspects it's time to move onto the second part of the 5 E's.
Which brings us to Exploring! This section is for students to develop among themselves. Whether this is making the discoveries in a group or working alone. During this E, students are identifying and developing concepts. They do this by researching the subject and/or experimenting with the different ideas that they previously learned. The students are now taking the question that was posed in the Engage section and using that question to make new discoveries. Relating back to our fieldwork experience, students were asked to do research on their mystery explorers and they had to go through the inquiry process to complete this assignment. They had to read the first article that was supplied and make a hypothesis based on it. Through this students were asked to read through other research articles and find out more information on their mystery explorer. During this section, the students were exploring new pieces of information based on their "mystery explorers." The exploring section should be done by the students and ONLY by the students. Teachers should be there to support and observe the students learning during this section.
The next E that follow Exploring is Explain. This portion should only be done when the students have completed the Exploring portion. If students are not done with that portion this will be difficult for them to complete. Through this section, students are asked to explain their findings to the whole class or a small group. Having the students explain their findings helps them review on what they learned and might even introduce new key terms. Through the students verbalizing their findings they are also creating social skills. This section is pretty self explanatory and I think is the easiest section for the students to complete. To the right of this blog is a video that goes into depth about the 5 E's. It breaks down all the concepts in a simple language and helps people understand the importance of including these different attributes.
The second to last E is Elaborate. This section goes more into depth about the given topic that the students just researched.  During this section, the students "Expand on the concepts they have learned, make connections to other related concepts, and apply their understandings to the world around them in new ways" (NASA, 1). Through this process the students are building more knowledge on what they discovered and implementing them through this process. An example of this would be having the students write a letter to their mystery explorers. We did not have time to incorporate this in our lesson, but we included it in our lesson plan. Having the students write a letter helps them use the terms and attributes they learned in the previous section. You can see that each step relies on one another in order to complete the 5 E's.
Final Step: Evaluate! Last but not least is the evaluate section which is crucial in this learning method. According to Enhancing Education, "Evaluate is the phase that encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and let teachers evaluate students' understanding of key concepts and skill development" (p. 1). The last section allows the students to tie up everything they discovered and present their findings either to class or small groups. This coincides with the Explain section. Through this the students are asked to use academic language they learned and key details. If there are any confusion with any topics that the students researched this would be the time to clarify any loose ends.
Learning more about the 5 E's definitely helps me see the importance of this aspect. Without these E's our lessons would not be engaging for the students. The whole point of teaching is to help the students learn through an engaging and helpful way. When writing this blog, I came up with a bunch of ideas to use the 5 E's of learning through a Social Studies lens. I'm hoping that I can implement these ideas when I student teach. Until next time bloggers :)

Works Cited

Dunbar, B. (2012). 5Es Overview: "The 5E instructional model" Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/nasaeclips/5eteachingmodels/ 

The 5 E's. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://enhancinged.wgbh.org/research/eeeee.html