5 E's Model for Science Lesson Planning

This week, I taught a science lesson using the 5 E's model. If you have never heard of it, according to Enhancing Education's website, the  the 5 E's model is:
 
"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. The 5 E's can be used with students of all ages, including adults.
Each of the 5 E's describes a phase of learning, and each phase begins with the letter "E": Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. The 5 E's allows students and teachers to experience common activities, to use and build on prior knowledge and experience, to construct meaning, and to continually assess their understanding of a concept" (Enhancing Education, 2012).

I love this teaching model and found it has put the learners in the driver's seat of education. It helps them to become 21st century learners by teaching them how to inquire and explore during a lesson. Rather than just memorizing data that they are given, they find answers and work like real scientists. I love this model.

As for my lesson, I was a bit worried because I taught the lesson to a group of kindergarteners. Many say it can't be done because the students are so young, however, it worked extremely well for me. Granted, because this was a new learning model for them, they were not sure what to do and are used to being led by the hand in activities. So, I had to walk them through what to do.

When the students walked in, they saw on their tables different tools for measuring the weather. For example, they saw thermometers, rain gauges and pictures of some things. (I couldn't bring in a weather vane, but they saw pictures and recognized what they were). They came to the carpet and we discussed what we had been going over in Science recently. Our unit has been in weather and we spoke about seasons, temperatures, clothing that they have been wearing outside, etc. We tied past experiences to what we were discussing, too.
 Then, they sat down at their tables, passed the tools around and talked with their friends what the lesson could possibly be about. This was the Engage portion of my lesson and interested them enough to want to move onto the next portion of the lesson, which was Explore. Next, I read them a book regarding tools for measuring weather. The students were very engaged during this lesson and loved to relate their knowledge of weather measurement tools to the book and to our conversation, this lead to the Explain part, where we discussed by using a chart that had pictures the different tools from their tables and their purpose. Next, we measured the temperature inside the classroom and outside the classroom for the elaborate portion of the assignment.
Finally, for the evaluate portion of the assignment, the students coloring pictures of a couple of the tools we discussed and drew the rest of what they remembered. Overall, the lesson went extremely well and the students were very engaged. I had a great time!

Reference for this post:
Enhancing Education. (2012). The 5 E's. Retrieved from http://enhancinged.wgbh.org/research/eeeee.html