How to Create a 5 E Lesson Plan

Updated on September 29, 2018

Dominique Broomfield MEd

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Dominique is a Instructional Coach and Math teacher in Denver Co. She focuses
her teaching practices on researched based pedagogy .
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The 5E lesson Plan

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What is a 5E Lesson Plan?

The 5 E lesson supports inquire-based instruction. It allows children to make discoveries
and to process new skills in an engaging way. Teachers can also adequately plan power
objectives more effectively by using the 5E process. Children are not just learning with this
method, they are more knowledgeable about their own metacognition because they are
coached along and not dictated by teachers merely lecturing. The role of the teacher is to
facilitate and support students as they use prior knowledge to build new knowledge.
The 5 Es are:
 Engage
 Explore
 Explain
 Elaborate
  Evaluate
When planning a lesson each of these areas should be completed. Often times these
lessons may take a few days to complete.

1. Engage
To engage means to excite and to draw your child or student's curiosity. It means to wow
them in a way that catches their attention. It is not forcing children to learn but inviting them
to do so. This is how lessons are introduce. It does not have to be difficult or overly detailed
just interesting enough to open students minds for the learning process to begin. Using
technology to engage student learning makes planning very easy for teachers in today's
classrooms. Using Smartboard technology, videos, illustrations, asking questions, KWL
charts, reading a great book, acting out a character or even introducing a game are ways to
engage students at the beginning of a lesson.

2. Explore
Once students are fully in grossed in the lesson, intrigued by a video or maybe a book, now
it is time to allow them to explore the concept. Lets say I do a lesson on Camouflage, first I
would engage them with an informative video, explaining camouflage with animation. Now
in the explore they will play lets say a game where they will go out side and break up into
teams. Each team will be given a minute to find as many various colored strings scattered in
the grass. The idea with exploring is to give the learner the opportunity to practice or work
with their new knowledge in some way. The most effective explorations allow for mistakes
or trial and error. Its is looking at a concept before discussing all the details, with hopes that
students will discover answers to possible questions through exploration.

3. Explain
Students now have an opportunity to hear from their educator. The teacher's role so far has
been to mainly facilitate learning, now they can use their expertise to answer questions
students may have about what they are learning. They also may pose questions to the
student to see what they are able to explain what they have learned. Checking for
misunderstandings helps the teacher to observe what objectives need to be clarified or
taught. So for example, with the Camouflage Lesson, once the students have picked as
many strings as possible, they should count each color that they picked. Which color did
they pick up the most, which color did they pick the least amount of? Have them make a
chart, so they can look at their findings and compare as a group. Students should notice
that they picked less green strings because the green was blending in with the grass. They
have more of a different color like purple because of its contrast in color. This explaining is
done without the teacher having to do much lecturing. The lesson is reinforced by what the
students have seen from their exploring.

4. Elaborate
Here the students can participate in an extension or a different activity that either re-teaches
an objective or teaches more details about the concept being taught. Here differentiation
can be used. A student above level will need an elaboration that extends or enriches the
lesson. A student below level will need perhaps a repeat of the same explore activity with
more teacher input to guide students through again to correct misunderstandings. Again
with the camouflage, elaboration may be discussing what other animals besides say frogs
use camouflage? What elements in their habitat allow them to do so? Or the teacher might
say let's look at our charts again from the results of our game. Doing so will allow him or her
to re-teach or elaborate on what was misunderstood.

5. Evaluate
Finally, after the objectives are taught, it is time to assess. What have students effectively
learned? What do they not understand? What should be done to help them? Assessments
do not have to be the traditional quiz or essay. It can be a reflection, a project, book report,
or a model. Like with the camouflage lesson, the evaluation could an assignment where
students come up with 5 facts about camouflage and illustrate each in their own unique
way. They might make a model, paint a picture, or make a mini book with drawings and
facts to illustrate what they learned. Using a rubric the teacher or parent can now easily
grade or make note of what is learned and of what needs to be retaught.

Make it Easy on Yourself When Planning

Many veteran teachers find the 5E lesson plan just more to do. I think that it makes teaching
the lesson easier in that the students are more willing to learn, the activities are set up, the
lesson sequence is well thought out and the objective is thoroughly covered.
Use the following words when questioning and make sure to keep the Scientific Method in
mind:
 What do you observe?
 Make a hypothesis.
 Analyze the data, what can you conclude?
 What connections can you make?