I was barely a teacher when I became a principal!

I was given the hypothetical question: How are the steps of the 5 E lesson plan aligned with the inquiry process and if I were a school principal would I encourage my tea hers to use the 5 E lesson plan?

For those who don't know, A quick review of a 5 E lesson plan follows:

1. Engage: The teacher will ask a riveting question, define a problem or illustrate a surprising event to get the student's attention.

2. Explore. Students get directly involved with materials and work in teams, sharing and communicating.

3. Explain: The students make observations and tell what they see/notice; the teacher uses this opportunity to correctly name/describe what they notice.

4. Elaborate: The students make connections to other related concepts and to the world around them. Further inquiry by the student and new understandings occur. Ex: A child notices that a flagpole shadow changes position throughout the day. Later the child rotates a beach umbrella to protect from the sun.

5. Evaluate: This is an on-going process throughout. The students as well as the teacher evaluate their end products using rubrics, interviews and portfolios.

The lesson process is open-ended and open to change.

With some not-to-creative thinking, the commonalities between the 5 E's and the inquiry process are clear.

In an inquiry lesson the teacher tells the students what they will be learning about and tells why it is important/interesting or in other words, engages them.

Then each student forms a hypothesis and justifies their theory in small groups and forms a plan to find the answer. In other words, they explore.

Data is collected and recorded by the students in an inquiry lesson and such data may explain why their hypotheses are correct or not. (I know, this is a little flimsy.)

During the analysis phase of an inquiry lesson the students will elaborate on what they have found.

Finally in the conclusion the students will discuss their results with one another and interpret or evaluate them. What do the results mean?

This may lead to further questions and the process may begin again. Does this sound like it is open-ended and open to change? This sounds familiar.

As a principal I would encourage my teachers to use the 5 E lesson plan. I believe it is a trim version of the inquiry process but does the exact same job. It may also be easier for some to accept in other content areas because the inquiry process is usually associated with science. It is interesting that when our group was trying to decide on a topic for our 5 E lesson plan project, most wanted to do a science lesson.

I believe the 5 E's are important for students because as I mentioned in a previous blog, students need to be taught how to think and keep their brains active. This will give them practice as critical thinkers so they can make intelliegent decisions later in life. Evaluation and other higher order thinking skills take time and practice to develop. Teachers and students alike need an alternative to direct instruction.

I see in many of my observations that most teachers use direct instruction. I believe it is because it is a lot easier and a lot less time consuming. Furthermore, since so many classrooms are now inclusion classrooms and include exceptional students who require direct instruction, teachers most likely believe it is easier to just teach one lesson using DI than to teach two lessons for the same topic. I also believe it is easier. However, if direct instruction is always used, who is being cheated? It is the high mastery students who may become disenchanted with school and although they have the ability to be productive life-long learning members of society, there may be a greater chance they will not flourish and learn to their full potential.