Discovery Education works beautifully with the 5 E science lesson model. Let’s take a closer look at how it fits:
Engage– An “engage” activity should do the following:
- Make connections between past and present learning experiences
- Anticipate activities and focus students’ thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students should become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.
Build a simple PowerPoint using embedded video and images to introduce a concept you are working to convey to your students. You can find these in the Learn section of DE Science.
Explore: This phase of the 5 E’s provides students with a common base of experiences. They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.
We have our own Explore section within DE Science that fills this requirement for you that includes Explorations, Virtual Labs, Integrated Science Simulations, and FUN-damentals.
Explain: This phase of the 5 E’s helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring. They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate new skills or behaviors. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviors.
If you look within our content you have a couple of options for this strand. Within the Demonstrate section of DE Science you will find BCR’s (Brief Constructed Responses), which have students provide written explanations to what they have learned. You can also create Writing Prompts, which can be found in the Building Tools section of DE.
Elaborate: This phase of the 5 E’s extends students’ conceptual understanding and allows them to practice skills and behaviors. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest, and refine their skills.
Here is where students can use tools like MovieMaker, Photostory, iMovie, or may web 2.0 tools to make connections between prior knowledge and newly learned concepts. Over half of DE content is editable so there are n copywrite concerns.
Evaluate: This phase of the 5 E’s encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students’ understanding of key concepts and skill development
DE Science allows teachers to utilize our formative assessments for each unit or to create their own assessments built around state standards.