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What is the 5E Instructional Model?
Posted by  Francis Vigeant   on May 14, 2017

The widely established 5E teaching sequence – which includes the progressive stages
Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate – is helpful for informing the
design of science programs, units, and lessons.

However, it’s important to pose the question: Does their current incarnation actually
work to support the Next Generation Science Standards and deepen STEM (science,
technology, engineering and math) learning in our students, or does it require
adaptation to best serve NGSS?
The 5Es are an instructional model encompassing the phases Engage, Explore,
Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate, steps which educators have traditionally taught
students to move through in phases.

First, instructors open a lesson with an activity or question meant to engagestudents,

snag their interest, and offer the opportunity for them to share what they already know
on the subject. This phase might include helping them make connections between
their preexisting knowledge base and the new ideas that will come down the pipeline
in the lesson or unit. Many educators use traditional KWL charts, in which students
list what they already know and what they want to learn during this step. At the end of
the lesson, students go back to this chart to list what they learned.

After engage comes explore, in which students carry out hands-on activities. Through
their experiments or other interactions with the material, they deepen their
understanding of the content.

Once they’ve explored, students attempt to explain what they have learned and
experienced with help from the teacher – who only then explains concepts or terms
encountered during exploration.

From there, students elaborate on their understanding, applying what they’ve learned

to new situations to deepen their skills. In the final phase, students evaluate, reflecting
on and providing evidence of their new understanding of the material.

At first glance, this seems like a good model for hands-on, student-centered
instructional learning. However, this model misfires in one critical sense: it is used as
a linear progression. Engagement comes first, exploring, explaining, and elaborating
follow, and then evaluating wraps up the process.
  

The issue with this approach is that the 5Es are not actually a linear progression.
Engaging is not separate from exploring. Exploring is not necessarily separate from
explaining. Part of exploring requires elaborating. All of these elements require
evaluating.

Each step informs the others, even when they are more than once removed. To think
of these phases in a linear sense, or to structure a lesson plan in this way, does not set
students up to become scientists and engineers in the way required by the Next
Generation Science Standards.

That doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. The 5Es are still
an incredibly useful tool in teaching and learning.

The 5E Model and NGSS

If it is to be of use with the Next Generation Science Standards, the 5E instructional

model must move from a traditional model of instruction to a next generation model
of instruction. Specifically, here is how it looks for each of the Es:

 “Engage” transitions from “I tell them or show them” to helping students reflect
on what they already know and ask questions about what they don’t yet
understand, which propels them toward an initial feeling of dissatisfaction.

 “Explore” moves away from thoughts such as “I give them,” “I demonstrate,”

or “They look at a model” and toward students themselves unpacking the
problem, developing a model, and gathering data.

 “Explain” no longer means turning and talking, having a carousel discussion, or

asking questions like “What did” and “What was.” Now, it means digging
deeply into where the question has been answered or the problem solved, and
using evidence to support claims.

 "Elaborate" is less about reading, watching or introducing new ideas, and more
about forging the incredibly valuable concept-to-self, concept-to-concept and
concept-to-world connections that help tie anchor and investigative phenomena
together.

 “Evaluate” cannot simply mean vocabulary assessments or graded journals

anymore; now it means reflecting critically on the investigative process, the
hypothesis, and the anchor phenomena.
That's why we really see these Next Generation Science Standards as going beyond
linear, two-dimensional models. This approach is not enough anymore; it is the
formation of skills, and the ability to develop and use content, that is so vital to the
classroom experience today.

 This post was updated on Feb. 16, 2018.

Topics: 5E Instructional Model

 
7/13/2018, 2:56:59 PM

Thank you so much for sharing such brilliant information as always. I always do stop
by here whenever I think like I need some information on particular topic in this niche
and I do get the source for preparing my article .That’s the main reason why I love the
information shared over here. Do share more and more information as always.

 
5/25/2019, 1:03:46 AM

My question is how do you get kids to want to even ask questions? I teach high school
and the only way most of my students learn anything is by my forcing it down their
throats, because they aren't even curious about phenomena. This new model is
awesome for kids who WANT to learn, but for the vast majority, school is where their
parents want them to go so they aren't home all day. Any thoughts?

Francis Vigeant
 
6/4/2019, 1:55:19 AM

Without learning more specifics about your community, I can only offer general
thoughts here. I think your comment/question strikes at the very heart of teaching and
learning today. What is the value-add of time on learning today? 

The art of teaching is partly match-making. The "perfect match" is where students
encounter phenomena first-hand that engages their curiosity at a gut level and makes
them want to learn more. The key to making this work is that both the encounter and
the reason to engage need to be owned by the student. Most traditional teachers rely
on a show-and-tell model where a computer program, book, or demonstration/video
shows students phenomena and then the teacher proceeds to tell them about it and
why they should care. However, this is not how student's brains are structured to
learn; in fact it fights their very biology. A student needs to believe something is
important in order to begin processing it. This is why a next-generation model of
inquiry instruction isn't about devices, eBooks, simulations, etc., but instead is about
learning to think as a skill. This is why all of the Next Generation Science Standards
(performance expectations) occur in the context of phenomena and have a science and
engineering practices dimension.  

Once students believe something is important, they will have authentic questions
about the phenomena, providing a platform for inquiry -- to answer students’ own
questions. But for students to want to ask their questions, they need to feel that their
questions are respected and taken seriously by everyone [peers and teachers]. This is
an issue of culture, both teaching and learning, that a teacher can influence. No one
wants to look or feel stupid for asking a question, especially a teenager. Cracking
jokes, allowing students to snicker at other students, or comments from adults like
"we talked about that" or "you should already know that" are major barriers to
building a culture of intellectual risk-taking. Remember: middle school and high
school students will opt out of asking questions as a way of opting out of potential
personal embarrassment.

This blog post provides 7 ways to set expectations for an effective, productive
classroom dialogue: https://www.knowatom.com/blog/7-expectations-you-should-set-
for-a-genuine-socratic-dialogue

Here is another blog post that talks through how the layout of your classroom can help
to facilitate a scientific discourse in which students learn the expectations of asking
questions and analyzing what they think and why they think it:
https://www.knowatom.com/blog/how-to-get-students-to-participate-in-socratic-
dialogue

You may also find the eBook “How to Develop a Culture for Success with the Next
Generation Science Standards” and the webinar “Asking better questions: The key to
deeper, more engaged, more authentic science instruction” on our free resource library
helpful.
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 Next Generation Science Standards (92)
 STEM (59)
 NGSS (56)
 Next Generation Science Classroom Instruction (19)
 Teaching in 3 Dimensions (17)

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