Thursday, February 9, 2012

The 5 E's....Learn it. Love it. Live it.


The 5E Instruction model...

What is it? What does it do? How can we utilize it to best aid our classroom? Today I am going to break down and summarize the 5E's in this model.

1. Engagement
    -First impressions are everything...whether it's for yourself or the lesson you are going to teach. Here is when you want to GRAB the students' attention. The questions start here. You introduce and idea and a problem.  The students become introduced the material you are about to cover, laying the groundwork for their exploration. Brainstorming is a key idea. They make connections with the new material and what they already know.

2. Exploration
    - Students begin working with the material presented. Questions that were raised before are the driving source. Working as a team you will explore and test the questions discussed. Students will work together collecting data, making decisions, and building their knowledge base.

3. Explanation
    -Explain the discoveries and processes observed. Develop the content and lesson you are trying to achieve. Written, verbal, and creative resources will aid in clarification and feedback. Sum up the ideas, explain vocabulary and new terms, review what you have spoken on.

4. Elaboration
    -Take it a step farther. Take what the students have learned and apply it to a new stiuation to reiterate the idea. This can lead to new inquiries and questions and help the students fully understand.

5. Evaluation
     -Be aware of how well the students actually learn the material. This is an ongoing process through many source by teacher and learner. Follow ups, checklists, portfolios, and interviews. Further needed problem solving will be decided upon.

         This model is all about challenging the students to figure out things on their own. The E's are developed to have the student think outside of the the box. Introduce a topic. Have the students take what they already know and use that to develop the new ideas and solve problems. Continuing that idea, the students then take the observations and information and use that in challenging another idea. This model keeps the learning process going with the students driving it the whole time. The teacher is just a controller, leading them in the right direction. This is interesting and challenging at the same time. As a teacher, most of us will have the inclination to explain everything and show the children what is happening and how it is happening. Though they will learn far more when they figure things out themselves.

   In confidence of my execution and performance, I would rank the E's as follows. Most confident to least....

1. Engagement
2. Exploration
3. Elaboration
4. Explanation
5. Evaluation

1. I seem to do well engaging students and getting them excited on a topic. Introducing the idea and getting things going will be fine.
2. Exploring the topic and letting the students go doesn't seem too hard. Showing them how to perform the lesson and keeping classroom management would be the only difficulties I could foresee. Other than that it is pretty straight forward.
3. Challenging the students to take it the next step on in exploring their ideas may be tricky but with a little guidance I can see it being fine. Any misconceptions may be the main issue here. 
4. The explanation is the only time where we briefly "lecture" on the topic. The main concern here is truly getting the point across while maintaining their attention. I have to be on my game and  be able to explain the objective in a simple enough way.
5. Evaluation is the ongoing process of improving ourselves. Stepping back, examining yourself, and being critiqued all are harder than they appear. Then figuring out how to improve on what I did seems to be challenging.















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