11-4-08 - Presentations, Assessment, and 5 E Model

In class today, we finished up our mid-term presentations. First we had a presentation on the four seasons, and then we got to go outside and shoot off our bottle rockets from a presentation on the 28th. Shooting off the rockets was really fun, and since we had to take turns shooting them off, we got to discover some of the variables that affected the results. The biggest discovery was that to get the rocket to shoot higher, you had to make sure that the cork was really tight, but this also delayed the take off. After finishing our presentations, we moved into lecture on assessment. A lot of good information was presented during this lecture, but a lot of it is also information that we are talking about in my Educational Assessment course. I guess it is nice to see the same information show up in different contexts.

Another activity I did outside of class is read the web link on the 5 E Model. This model is a constructivist instructional model consisting of 5 steps: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. In the Engage stage, students make connections and the students focus on instructional tasks. During the Explore stage, students get to directly be involved with phenomena and materials. Students get to communicate what is learned and terminology is introduced in the Explain stage. The Elaborate stage allows for students to expand the concept, connect it to related concepts, and then apply it to the real world. Finally during the Evaluate stage, an on-going process of checking understanding of concepts and knowledge is occurring.