chapter 4

Karen Saa

10/7/2009

Chapter four discussed in detail the method of teaching science for understanding. It primarily focused on the 5-E Model of Instruction. The 5-E model also focuses on the NSES tasks of inquiry. After reading the chapter I am convinced that inquiry teaching is the best way to actually teach Science. Students learn through investigating the world around them. This allows students to learn concepts on their own with the assistance of the teacher. It is a true scaffolding process. The 5-E Model consists of five stages. The stages are the following: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. Each phase focuses on a slightly different tactic of teaching. The explore stage focuses more on the guided discovery while the explain stage gives opportunities for direct textbook teaching. I was pretty surprised that the engage process is so important to the teaching of science. Many times we just want to get to the point with students rather than focusing on grasping their attention first. This was also the same thing that made sense to me after I read over the chapter. It makes perfect sense to engage students prior to teaching. This is true for science but also true for all other education. I am just confused on what to do to really get students engaged in science. The chapter talks about the engage process as the phase that gets students attention and that also serves as a tool that enables teachers to learn students’ prior conceptions of that topic. Would experiments be appropriate or would in class discussion be an appropriate engaging activity?