in Planning ·
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Have you ever heard of the 5 e lesson plan? I hadn’t until fairly recently and I’m becoming obsessed with what it is and how it works!
The 5 e lesson plan is a routine in which students engage, explore, explain, elaborate and are evaluated on a particular topic. These 5 steps make up the 5 e lesson plan model. I’m sharing an overview of the 5e lesson plan in this post and will share more about each step in upcoming blog posts so stay tuned!
What is 5 e lesson plan model?
The 5 e lesson plan has actually been around for a while. However, it is gaining more traction in the subjects of math and science because it is more aligned with how students learn. Rather than having students learn a bunch of different steps and algorithms, students start learning about topics and standards through hands on discovery. By having that experience with problem solving, students have a place to connect learning to. That hook is foundational in helping students understand math and science at a deeper level.
With this in mind, let’s dive into the 5e lesson plan design.
5e lesson plan design
The 5e lesson plan design is very intentional with each of the 5 steps in their specific order and purpose. Doing the steps out of order actually messes up the impact of the overall lesson.
Engage
This is the first step to the 5 e lesson plan. Teachers start by engaging students in the learning. This could be posing a problem, a headline, an attention grabbing image or video that puts the learning in the real world. The main idea is just to get students interested in the topic or standard.
The 5 E Lesson Plan Piece: Explore
The exploring step is where most of the learning starts. Students are given a problem to solve using what they know. These problems ground students in the learning. Using groups or pairs help in this step because students can talk through how and what they think they should do. Teachers are posing the problem to students but aren’t telling or showing student show to do it. This is a key difference between the ‘i do, we do, you do’ style of teaching.
This step in the 5 e lesson plan can feel messy or disorganized. But the purpose of this step is help students understand the math before having a formal formula or algorithm to solve with. This exploring piece will make the formal learning easier and make more sense to students because they will have a experience to connect the learning to.
This is often where manipulatives make an appearance. I share more about my favorite math manipulatives in this blog post if you are interested in building up your stock pile!
Explain
After the explore section comes the explain part. I have students share their thinking, strategies and learnings in this section. Those strategies and thinking comes directly from the exploration problem.
I will sometimes record their thinking in a math poster or build up new vocabulary. In this section, the teacher and students work together to create a cohesive meaning. I am often providing vocabulary to students, or combining strategies to build to the algorithm. Because students have had experience with the topic, a more advanced strategy like the algorithm or notation doesn’t seem foreign to students.
Elaborate
The next step in the 5e lesson plan is elaborate. This is the part where students apply the new thinking or learning to additional problems. Maybe this is practice with similar problems to the explore one. Or maybe this is a chance for students to apply a concept to similar real life examples.
Evaluate
I think that this step of the 5 e lesson plan is most self explanatory because chances are, you already do this step. Take time to evaluate your students to see what they know. This can be a formal summative assessment or formative task that you use for data. I share creative summative assessment ideas in this blog post if you want something different!
5e lesson plan for math
The 5 e lesson plan isn’t just for science or STEM! The 5e lesson plan for math still follows the 5 steps listed above. Math is full of problem solving chances so this cycle of engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate fit right in. If you are looking to get started with a 5 e lesson plan, I recommend picking a standard in geometry. Volume of prisms or finding area and perimeter are great places to start as those topics are already pretty hands on. Fractions is another great one to build up exploring and explaining different strategies. I share a bunch of different ideas and tips to teaching these topics that would fit right into the 5 e lesson plan model.
- Volume of Prisms
- Adding and Subtracting Fractions How To
- Finding the Area and Perimeter
- Addition with Regrouping
- Subtracting with Regrouping
More about the 5 e lesson plan
Still curious abouta 5 e lesson plan? I don’t blame you! I deep-dived on this topic and still feel like I have so much to learn! These blog posts and academic research helped me understand the 5e lesson plan design better.
- Constructivism in the Classroom – Educational Psychology
- The 5E Instructional Model – NASA
- Empowering Students: The 5E Model Explained – Lesley University
- How to Use the 5E Model in Your Science Classroom – Edutopia
- How to Write a Lesson Plan in the 5Es Format – Language and Ideas
- Planning a 5E Lesson Plan – Knowledge Platform
- 5E Lesson Plan Template – Edutechspot
I’d love to know if you have tried the 5 e lesson plan! How’d it go? What are you still wondering? I will do a follow up post about this lesson plan soon!
