I was trying to teach a well-prepared lesson and the kids were not having it. They were talking, running around the room, and just generally not buying-in.
As I thought of the hours of preparation that had gone into the unit, I let myself feel the exhaustion. My emotions raw from the hours of physical and mental fatigue were betraying me. My eyes began to burn with tears.
I assigned a task and slowly began to put away my teaching materials. My inner voice that had pushed my Type A personality to push harder my entire life got quiet. My shoulders drooped as my thought shifted from I can to I can’t. I trudged to my desk and tried to make a show of doing something important and willed the tears not to overflow. I wanted to run from the room.
That was the first time I thought about giving up teaching.
What do you know about student engagement?
If you are looking for a lesson plan template, grab this guide.
Over the years, as I have studied and researched teaching and learning one thing is clear. We are teaching all the wrong stuff in teacher prep programs. I am a master’s degree level teacher with an additional 27 hours of graduate credit and very few pieces of practical advice have ever been sent my way.
In my opinion, the area of greatest weakness is lesson planning with student engagement at the center. Most teachers are taught that students will engage because they want to learn OR because you entertain them.
The problem is that engagement is about getting students to the point where they want to learn. I call that the buy- in. I have never seen a preparation program that addresses and trains future teachers on the salesmanship required before teaching can ever begin. That is why I think that homeschoolers can be so effective.
Parents know their kids way better than a teacher of 20+ – 150+ students. The result is that homeschoolers have the advantage to get the students to buy-in to the lessons (that doesn’t mean it is always easy). The same is often true for community educators.
I struggled.
I struggled with salesmanship. Part of the reason is that I really loved school and I didn’t understand the kids that didn’t. We were not starting on the same playing field.
My first full-time teaching job was at an inner city middle school. This is a school that had no expectation that the kids would have paper or pencil. I started in February after multiple teachers had quit and was given a key and told good luck. I wish I had known then what I know now.
At the time, it was brutal and I felt like I might go a little insane. I did the best job I knew how to do as a first-time teacher. In many ways, it was a failure. But over 10 years later, I look at it as my favorite teaching position.
You’re probably wondering how that could possibly be my favorite. The reason is that I got a kid to buy-in. I had a kid that got on a city bus and went to the public library and got a library card in order to complete one of my projects. He was in eighth grade and read at around a 2/3 grade level. It still brings tears to my eyes.
What is the problem here?
I went on to other teaching jobs and eventually to the college science classroom, but that was my most meaningful experience. After starting to teach my own kids, I saw some of the same issues with buy-in developing that I had seen over and over. I started researching in full force.
I stumbled upon the 5E model of instruction. This model focuses on engagement and exploration before explanations. It was the answer to a lot of my frustrations.
This model works in formal and informal settings. You can use it with an individual homeschooler or large groups of students. I think of this model as the gap between me and the kids.
Using Engagement and Exploration to Create Meaning.
The following is an example of using a 5E approach. If you have been working along with us in our 5 E lessons, you know that we have worked through some of the basic characteristics of matter. There is always more to explore.
Engage
I bought the kids dinosaur eggs a few weeks ago. One was a water hatchling and the other was a fossil dig. We are still working on the fossil dig, but this was a great chance to review some things we know about solids, liquids, and gases. I chipped off a little of the clay around the fossilized dinosaur. Is the dust a solid, liquid or gas?
There are lots of options as to the direction to move this study. We began learning about the particulate nature of matter (it is made up of small parts called atoms). I got them interested while they were working with a topic. They decided they wanted to find out the answers to my questions. They bought-in to the lesson. Once we had decided it was still solid, we could start our exploration.
Explore
Supplies:
water spray bottle
chalk
sand
small hammer or mallet or even a spoon would work
water with liquid soap and a straw.
I let the kids loose to explore. During exploration try to have a driving question. Could all of this matter be broken into parts? They started to dig in.
The kids explored and attempted to determine the answer to my question. They got the chance to dig, spray water, blow some bubbles, and make mud. They got to be serious and be silly. It couldn’t get much better.
We also reintroduced some of the questions that we have had about why the ocean is salty. My little guy is blowing air into the cup, although it does look like he is having a nice sip of bubbles. We had quite a few bubble beards.
Explain
After exploring for a little while, we went into the explanation phase. I asked lots of questions that helped the kids to make observations about their experiments. This is the time guide the students in developing explanations. This is also a time to introduce vocabulary and scientific theory.
These were our explanations:
All matter is made up of small parts or particles.
You can choose to name the particles as atoms or not.
Particles can be separated or joined to reform the object.
If you spray water on your hand, you can see the droplets and they will reform a larger quantity of water that drips off of your hand.
Elaborate/Experiment
Now we needed to experiment. The goal was to elaborate on the particulate nature of matter and introduce the idea that energy in the form of heat impacts the behavior of matter. We played with ice and they LOVED it! The kids spent over an hour having fun with these materials.
Evaluate
This can be as formal or as informal as you like. For this lesson, I simply ask the kids questions to make sure they had the basics.
If you haven’t tried 5E yet, come along with us on our adventure! Each lesson gets easier for me to implement and I am so proud of what my kids are able to do. I am learning a lot about this method on our journey. With this in my arsenal of techniques, I leave more days with good tears than bad.
Let me know if you have questions about implementing 5E in your home or classroom. You can grab your own guide to creating lessons just like this by clicking here.
Assemble bake bite-sized blanch boil caramelize clarify coats a spoon…
4 Comments
Wow, that looks like to much fun. My children will love it! Thank you so much for linking up to science sparks, and apologies for the disappearance of the linky. It should be back to stay now! Emma @sciencesparks
No problem! Glad you got the linky back up. Thanks for stopping by.
5E seems like a really good way to cover science with little guys
Thanks for stopping by Ticia, I have to admit that I was skeptical at first, but it has changed how we are doing science. I love the depth of knowledge and their excitement. Kim
Wow, that looks like to much fun. My children will love it! Thank you so much for linking up to science sparks, and apologies for the disappearance of the linky. It should be back to stay now!
Emma @sciencesparks
No problem! Glad you got the linky back up. Thanks for stopping by.
5E seems like a really good way to cover science with little guys
Thanks for stopping by Ticia,
I have to admit that I was skeptical at first, but it has changed how we are doing science. I love the depth of knowledge and their excitement.
Kim