The Five E Model: Curiosity and Autonomy in the Word Language Class with Chelsea Lawrence

Ever come across the 5 E Model? It’s a strategy that initially found its roots in science classes, but guess what? My guest on GWP The Podcast episode 47, Chelsea Lawrence, shares with us how she’s tweaked and fine-tuned it to fit right into her Spanish class.

The Five E’s

So, what exactly do those E’s stand for? Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate – they’re like the building blocks of this method. It’s all about getting students curious, digging deeper, laying out explanations, expanding on concepts, and then giving everything a solid evaluation.

The beauty of it? Flexibility. You’re not on the hook to use all the components. Pick and choose what works for your teaching style and your students’ vibe. It’s like a toolbox for you to play with. 🛠️📚

In this post, I’ll briefly touch on the 5 E’s, but to hear all of the details of our conversation, listen to episode 47 above or click and listen here. 

The Five E Model

The Five E model is an inquiry based teaching strategy, that it was really developed for science classes. However, it has been used in different subjects. 

Chelsea explained how she found out about this model through an email which inspired her to learn more about it. As Chelsea noted, it’s really all about collaboration in active learning, student centered learning, and student questions are part a key part of it. Then, leveling up to analysis and drawing conclusions. What is really wonderful is how she has taken this model and molded it to fit her classroom.

Engage

Chelsea explained that the first E is engage. It is how do we cool our students. How do we first captivate the attention of our students? This is just to foster curiosity to hook our students.

Chelsea likes using a lot of thinking strategies from Harvard’s Project Zero. They have a toolbox full of strategies. She also likes using the question formulation technique that was created by the Right Question Institute. As Chelsea notes, these are all really good ways to engage students, and a lot of them produce student created questions. In episode 47, she also explains show it helps with question structure. 

Explore

After you hook your students, you move to the explore part of this model. Chelsea defines this section as, “This is a time period that the students are learning and creating connections from previously learned information from other classes. Then, they’re adding that new piece of making those connections and also making their thinking visible.” How does she do this with her students? Chelsea has done this several ways depending on the level. She’s let it be more of an independent investigation or research where students take their questions and go to Google and research in the target language, find videos, articles, and whatever materials. She’s also done it where she’s provided the students with a variety of resources to help lead them to answer their own questions.

Explain

When we started talking about explain, Chelsea said that she goes back and forth between explore and explain typically two to three times in a unit as they are adding pieces to the unit before she gets to that final evaluation piece where everything comes together. This is where students start demonstrating their understanding. To do this simply, a simple q&a in class of bouncing ideas off or putting notes up on the board ideas can be part of this section of the model. Listen to episode 47 to hear some more examples of how Chelsea incorporates this part into her lessons. 

Elaborate

Chelsea typically places the evaluate before elaborate and believes that this is just kind of a personal choice. We discuss this a bit more in our discussion. She explained that elaborate is that summative piece of the unit, its application, its creation, its synthesis, the higher Bloom’s categories. 

Evaluate

Chelsea adds another piece to the puzzle that enriches a topic more, deepens the topic, and perhaps opens it up for a compare and contrast or analyzing a connection or relationship of cause and effect. Hear how she incorporates evaluation into her units by clicking above or listen to episode 47 on you favorite podcast player. In our discussion, she also walks us through a unit using the Five E Model. You definitely don’t want to miss this discussion! Click above to listen to Chelsea explain the model in detail. 

Meet Chelsea Lawrence

Chelsea Lawrence is a Spanish teacher at UMS-Wright Preparatory School in Mobile, Alabama. She is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi with a B.A. in Spanish and a M.A. in the Teaching of Languages. In her Upper School Intermediate Spanish courses, she focuses on topics of Central America and the Caribbean with the greatest interest in Guatemala, Panamá, and Cuba. Chelsea enjoys presenting the innovative teaching strategies that she has found to be successful for the World Language Classroom at the state, regional and national levels. Outside the classroom, you can find her with a good cup of coffee, working in the garden, or spending time with family!