EDIM 513 Week 6_Thoughts of Inquiry After Week 6

It has only been a week since I last posted, so not much has changed. The main thing we focused our learning on this week was the 5E's of instruction. They consist of:

• Engage
• Explore
• Explain
• Elaborate
• Evaluate

Bybee, R., Taylor, J. A., Gardner, A., Van Scotter, P., Carlson, J., Westbrook, A., Landes, N. (2006). The BSCS 5E Instructional Model: Origins and Effectiveness. Colorado Springs, CO: BSCS.

Although it may seem obvious that every lesson should have all of these stages within it, it is easy for students and teachers to either look past one or not connect them together. So often students go through the motions of school and just getting things done, but don't ever stop to smell the roses. As teachers, it is our job to allow our students to understand that school and learning is a process. Yes at times it can be unfair, not that much fun, and involving topics not in our field of interest, but these are the moments that make us better. Using the 5E's to drive all of our lessons are key to breach this gap for students. If you can get them to be excited and engaged in what they are learning, then the exploration will come natural to them. Guiding them to connect their exploration to facts and then go beyond is the explain and elaborate stage. Finally, we must reflect, review, and evaluate our learning. I feel that this final stage is often lost in the lack of time the school day / year provides.

I look at the practices of reflection, review, and evaluation for the brain like a meadow of knee high grass. If we complete a task or learn something new, it is like walking through the meadow one time and one time only. When you stop walking through it and look back, your path is shortly covered back up or forgotten. If you walk back over that path again to the starting point and turn back to see what is left this time, some of the grass is matted down. Repeating your path over and over, each time going a little further, mats down all of the grass, making it a definite path. Now relate that to your brain and the process of learning. Without reflection, review, and evaluation we are only subject to learning bits of information (blades of grass) that we stored (matted down) during our first time we experienced it (the first walk across the meadow).