A 5E LESSON PLAN FOR EVOLUTION

STEP1: ENGAGE

Find out for the students if they know who Jean Lamarck, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin were. 

STEP 2: EXPLORE

If there were any misconceptions that you pick up from the discussion in step 1, try and fix these.  Then, hand out the paper “Zoological Philosophy” originally done by Jean Lamarck (1809) and let them discuss the Lamarckian way of thinking.  Is this a scientific way of thinking?  After this has been discussed in class, hand out the next paper, “On the tendency of varieties   to depart indefinitely from the original type”, originally done by Alfred Russel Wallace (1858).  Is Wallaces’ way of thinking really that different from Lamarck’s way of thinking? Now hand out the final paper, “On the origin of species”, originally done by Charles Darwin (1859). How does Darwins explanations differ from his predecessors?

STEP 3: EXPLAIN

Divide the class into small groups and let them discuss how the thinking process changed from Lamarck in 1809 to Darwin in 1859, then let one person in the group, or however they see fit, explain what they discussed to the class.  If there are any misconceptions, you as the teacher have to fix them.  Ask if they think each person brought something new or is it just add on to what was already known. 

STEP 4: ELABORATE

Give the class an example of evolution in progress.  If at university level, and there is a molecular laboratory, you can let them test themselves to see what resistance their staphylococcus have to different types of penicillin.  Here you can bring in new concepts that you haven’t discussed with them because now they will see it and thus understand it better.

STEP 5: EVALUATE

Give a written or oral exam in which the students discuss how the views of evolution changed from Lamarcks time to Darwins, and also discuss their experiment, using their newly found knowledge.

FROM 3 TO 5: THE 5E LEARNING CYCLE MODEL

During the early 1970’s, the early learning cycle model had 3 stages (Exploration, invention and discovery), but this was changed to a 5E learning cycle model and the steps involved in this model are as follows:

STEP 1: ENGAGE: In this stage, you as teacher have to find out what the students already know.  This can be done by class discussions or short questionnaires.  From this, you know where to start with your lesson.

STEP 2: EXPLORE: During this step, you need to fix all the misconceptions that came to light from step 1.  You also give the students a hand on activity that will explore the topic in a bit more detail.

STEP 3: EXPLAIN: Here you could divide the class into groups and let them discuss what they just did in the activity.  Each group will then have a turn to explain to you and the rest of the class what they understood from this activity.  This is also where you bring in new concepts that you explain to the students to broaden their knowledge.

STEP 4: ELABORATE: Give the students a new activity where they will need to apply their newly found knowledge.  By doing this you ensure that this sticks.

STEP 5: EVALUATE: the purpose of this step is to see if the students truly understand what they just did.  This can be done formally as an exam of test or just as a oral presentation.

This is an easy way to develop a lesson plan, but just remember, students don’t all study the same way and in these 5 steps, you need to try and accommodate different studying techniques to improve your lesson plans effectiveness.

WHAT IS CONCEPTUAL CHANGE?

Prior knowledge is an important part of ones’ studying carrier, but sometimes the knowledge you have isn’t 100 % correct. Because you’ve had this misconception in your head for so long, it is difficult to just discard or replace it.  Conceptual change is when misconceptions are revealed and fixed by changing them to the correct concept.

When you have to fix a misconception that you carried with you for so long, your brain in many cases rejects the new concept.  If this new concept is not rejected, it is either learnt off by heart and memorized (rote learning or short term learning), or you could incorporate parts of the new concept into the areas that was wrong of the old concept, or your brain completely replaces the old one and keeps the new.  The last is the preferred option as this is what is remembered as prior knowledge later on in life.

You as teacher can test whether there was a conceptual change by giving the students an activity where they need to apply their newly found knowledge.

ORGANIC VS CONVENTIONAL FOOD, HOW DO YOU CHOOSE?

James and his mother walks into a local supermarket to buy some fruit for their mixed-fruit desert.  James loves fruit, and as soon as he gets to the fruit section, he immediately starts grabbing the fruit he thinks is best for the desert.   Everything he chose he puts in the basket his mom was carrying, but halfway through, he realizes that his mother is putting the bags he chose back onto the shelf and taking other bags, but of the same fruit.  Confused he turns around and asks his mom why she is doing it, taking the bag of apples he chose in his left hand and the bag his mom chose in his right.  He sees that the bag his mom took was more expensive, but the apples were smaller than the apples in the bag in his left hand, plus the ones his mom took doesn’t seem to look in any way better than the ones he chose, so why did she put his back?

His mom explained to him that the bag of apples she chose was grown differently than the bag he chose.  “But fruit are fruit, you just have money to waste” James says.  “look, the fruit you chose are conventionally grown fruit and the fruit I chose are organically grown fruit, that is the difference.” His mom says. At the pay point, James asks, “so why do you prefer organically grown fruit, and why is it different to conventionally grown fruit?”.  Irritated by all the questions, his mom just says, “because its better, no more questions ok”.

Exercise

Divide the class up into small groups. Let each group read the case study and then complete the questions below.

Questions

1)     What is the main idea from this story?

2)    Tabulate the differences you know between organic and conventional farming.

3)    Read the internet article “Organic vs. Conventional Food and Farming” by Allison Michelle Sites (http://asdssites.weebly.com/identifying-organics.html) , follow the links and then add to your table.

4)    Why is organic farming becoming increasingly popular?

5)    Taking into consideration the differences between the two farming methods, which do you think is better for the environment and your health? List the risks each method has to the environment and to your health.

6)    Read “It’s Easy Being Green: Organic vs. Conventional Foods—The Gloves Come Off” and explain in your own words why organic foods are more expensive than conventionally grown foods.

7)    Do you think that the organic industry will be able to sustain the growing world population? Explain.

Resources

1)    http://asdssites.weebly.com/identifying-organics.html

2)    It’s Easy Being Green: Organic vs. Conventional Foods—The Gloves Come Off. Available from: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/organic_green.html

CASE STUDIES

Students are more interested in things that could potentially influence their lives.  So why not use a real-life case to teach them certain concepts.  Case studies are ways to get the students to start thinking out of the box.  They are forced to find key issues in the case study, but also think of how these key issues relate or contribute to other issues, and eventually, they need to come up with ways to overcome or mitigate this problem, or to find ways of preventing it from occurring again.

So how do you develop a case study?

The paper that I used to write this blog is written by Waterman and Stanley, titled: “Investigative Case Based Learning”.  It is available online from: http://bioquest.org/case99.html

Step 1:

Define the objective of your case study.  What do you want your students to learn from it?

Step 2:

Think of a scenario that you could use.

Step 3:

Find an appropriate place for your scenario to happen.  This could be anywhere, as long as it is relevant to what you want your students to learn.

Step 4:

Start writing the draft, and when you done, “fine-tune” it until you are happy with the final project.

What you should remember not to do when developing a case study.

1)    Avoid Sci-fi scenarios.  It is always better to use scenarios that the target group knows is possible.

2)    Avoid using schools and research labs as the setting of the case study, because the point of the case study is to get students to think of what is happening in the real world.

3)    Don’t make the students part of the study.  It is always easier to point out someone else’s wrongs than to blame yourself.

The case study I have developed deals with organic and conventional farming and it will be put up on the blog at a later stage.

APPLYING “THE LORAX” TO A MODERN DAY EXAMPLE

After letting the class read “The Lorax”, we would discuss what the actual message is in the story, then I would use it to introduce the topic “environmental degradation due to anthropogenic activities”, and use coral reefs as a real life example.

I would give the class some background facts about coral reefs and why they are dying or going extinct.  People and animals rely on the coral reefs, just like all the characters in “The Lorax” relied on the Trufulla forest. And then I would discuss how certain events, leading to the death of corals are caused by humans (siltation, eutrophication, bleaching), and how this could be stopped or what could be done to help protect what is left of the coral reefs before it gets to the point where everything is lost like in “The Lorax”, and we have to start from the beginning, with just one seed.