A 5E lesson plan uses five stages to lead students from investigating a question to applying the newly learned terms to a new problem. The Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) developed the ‘5E’ instructional model in the late 1980s. Since then, teachers have used this method in the United States and internationally to teach science and other subjects.
This guide helps teachers understand how to use the 5E lesson plan in STEM classes. It explains what happens during each of the 5 stages, walks through 3 sample lesson plans, summarizes research findings, and shares common 5E lesson plan mistakes.
What Is a 5E Lesson Plan?
A 5E lesson plan is a learning sequence that uses the 5E instructional model, which leads students to construct their own understandings of a target phenomenon in 5 stages. Students explore a natural phenomenon or scientific problem before the teacher names the concepts behind it. The model reflects constructivist learning, in which learners actively build new ideas from prior knowledge.
Rodger Bybee, one of the model’s main developers, linked the 5E to what he called ‘teachable moments.’ He wrote that these occurred when ‘individuals…encounter something they recognize and that has meaning to them.’ The 5E sequence aims to create more teachable moments by first giving students an experience and then building the formal ideas from it.
Where Did the 5E Model Come From?
The 5E model comes from the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), which experimented with learning cycles for science teaching in the 1980s. BSCS worked with an IBM grant to make a new elementary science and health curriculum in the mid-1980s. They took inspiration from a guided discovery model of the 1960s, which had been tested in a science curriculum improvement project.
1962: J. Myron Atkin and Robert Karplus described a guided discovery model for science teaching.
1967: Karplus and Herbert Thier outlined a 3-phase learning cycle for the Science Curriculum Improvement Study. The phases were exploration, invention, and discovery.
Mid-1980s: BSCS used an IBM grant to design a new elementary science and health curriculum. They used some of the learning cycle principles to develop the 5E model.
2003: Science educator Arthur Eisenkraft proposed a 7-stage variation of the model, which he called the 7E model.
BSCS kept the middle 3 phases of the learning cycle. It renamed invention as explanation and discovery as elaboration. It then added 2 new phases: engage and evaluate. Engage draws on students’ prior knowledge, and evaluate builds in formal assessment.
The Five Steps of a 5E Lesson Plan
Each of the 5 steps of a 5E lesson plan has a particular role. The sections below describe what teachers and students do at each stage and what a good activity should look like.
Engage: Hook Students and Surface Their Ideas
The Engage step gets students interested in the topic and surfaces their prior ideas and any misconceptions they might have.
Purpose: Create curiosity and surface prior knowledge and misconceptions
Teacher: Asks a question or shows a puzzling phenomenon or task; listens and does not answer.
Students: Ask questions such as ‘What do I know about…’ and make predictions.
Explore: Students Get a Shared Experience
The Explore step gives every student the same concrete experience with the topic and allows them to test their ideas before the teacher names any concepts.
Purpose: Give students a common evidence base that they can use to build ideas.
Teacher: Acts as coach; sets up the activity; asks probing questions; does not explain how to solve the problem.
Students: Test predictions, record and compare findings, try different approaches, and talk with each other.
Explain: Students Explain Their Ideas, and the Teacher Introduces the Target Terms
The Explain step lets students verbalize their ideas and allows the teacher to introduce the target terms. Students and teachers come to agree on the terminology.
Purpose: Give students and the teacher a shared vocabulary.
Teacher: Asks students for their explanations and evidence before introducing the scientific or mathematical explanation directly and clearly and linking it to students’ observations.
Students: Explain concepts in their own words; listen to each other; question each other; refine their thinking.
Tip: BSCS recommends that the teacher’s explanation be brief and direct and that they move on to the next step.
Elaborate: Students Apply the Idea to a New Situation
The Elaborate step asks students to apply the new concept or skill in a related but different context than the one they explored.
Purpose: Deepen and transfer understanding; test misconceptions that surface during Explain.
Teacher: Asks students to use the new terms and point to evidence for their explanations.
Students: Solve a related problem; design a new test; make decisions; discuss approaches in groups.
Evaluate: Students Show Their Understanding, and the Teacher Assesses Their Learning
The Evaluate step lets students show how much they have learned, and the teacher assesses their learning. This can also be a formative assessment step integrated throughout the 5E lesson plan.
Purpose: Assess understanding and skills; give students formative feedback.
Teacher: Observes students applying the ideas and uses open-ended questions such as ‘What evidence do you have…’
Students: Explain the concepts in their own words and assess their own progress toward the learning goal.
5E Lesson Plan Examples
The 3 sample sequences below show how a 5E lesson plan can take place in different topics. They are not reports of actual classroom studies but rather illustrative designs. Follow your school’s lab safety guidelines.
Upper elementary science: How shadows change
Engage: Show a student a lamp shining on a toy and its shadow on a wall. Ask them to predict how the shadow will change as the lamp moves closer.
Explore: In pairs, students move a flashlight toward and away from a small object and measure the shadow length with a ruler, recording their results in a table.
Explain: Students describe the pattern they observed, and the teacher introduces the terms ‘light source,’ ‘opaque,’ and ‘shadow,’ explaining how light travels in straight lines.
Elaborate: Students predict what the shadow of a shadow puppet will look like at different distances and test their predictions.
Evaluate: Each student draws and labels a diagram and explains why the shadow changed.
Middle-school math: Finding the area of a rectangle
Engage: Ask students how many square floor tiles they would need to cover the corner of the classroom.
Explore: In groups, students cover paper rectangles with square tiles, recording the number of squares in rows, the number of rows, and the total number.
Explain: Groups share the pattern they found, and the teacher introduces the terms ‘length,’ ‘width,’ and ‘area,’ writing the equation A = l × w next to their data.
Elaborate: Students design garden beds that each have an area of 24 square units and find as many different shapes as they can.
Evaluate: Students find the area of a new rectangle and explain their method in writing.
High-school chemistry: What affects the rate of a reaction?
Engage: Drop a whole effervescent tablet into one glass of water and a crushed tablet into another. Ask which will finish fizzing first and why.
Explore: Groups of students time the same tablet in cold, room-temperature, and warm water, recording their results.
Explain: Groups share their results, and the teacher introduces the terms ‘rate of reaction’ and ‘surface area’ and a simplified version of collision theory.
Elaborate: Students design a new test, such as varying the amount of water, and predict the results before testing.
Evaluate: Students write a brief explanation that uses their own data and answer a few open-ended questions.
How to Design a 5E Lesson Sequence
Designing a 5E lesson sequence works best if you design the Explore activity first and build the rest of the lesson plan around it. Follow these steps:
- Write a clear learning goal.
- List likely misconceptions
- Design the Explore activity.
- Plan the Explain stage.
- Design the Elaborate task.
- Plan your checks for understanding.g
- Set realistic timing
BSCS designed its NIH-funded 5E classroom modules to take 5–10 days of class time.
What to Include in a 5E Lesson Plan Template
A useful 5E lesson plan template includes a row for each of the 5 stages. Copy the table below into your lesson plan document and fill in a learning goal, expected misconceptions, materials, and safety notes.
| Stage | Teacher actions |
| Engage | Question, demo, or task that surfaces prior ideas |
| Explore | Set up the activity, coach, ask probing questions |
| Explain | Ask for student explanations, then introduce the terms |
| Elaborate | Pose a related new problem |
| Evaluate | Observe and assess |
The suggested times fit into one 60-minute lesson. Adjust them to your class time or spread the stages out over several lessons.
What Research Says About the 5E Lesson Plan
There is solid research supporting the use of the 5E approach to teaching science, but it is stronger for the older learning cycle than for the 5E model itself. The findings are:
The learning cycle has a strong research base. A 1995 review by Lawson of more than 50 learning cycle studies found positive results in 17 of 18 studies that looked at the effect on scientific reasoning. A 1993 meta-analysis by Guzzetti and colleagues of 47 studies on correcting science misconceptions found that the learning cycle had an average effect size of about one quarter of a standard deviation.
There is less evidence for the 5E model. In 2006, BSCS found that fewer studies looked at the 5E model itself. It rated the evidence for subject mastery and scientific reasoning as ‘some evidence’ and cited studies that found positive effects on interest in science. It found too little evidence on understanding the nature of science and collaboration.
A later meta-analysis found positive effects. A 2019 meta-analysis by Çakır and Güven covered 38 studies of the 5E model in science teaching, conducted between 2006 and 2016. It found the strongest effect on achievement in physics and a moderate effect on attitudes toward the course.
Quality of use of the 5E matters. In a study of 634 ninth graders who used a BSCS curriculum (Coulson, 2002), classes in which the teachers followed the model at a medium or high level of fidelity gained about 28 percent on a chapter test. Classes with low fidelity gained about 17 percent.
Treat these findings with caution. BSCS notes that random assignment is hard to do in schools, and Coulson’s study used BSCS’s own curriculum. The meta-analysis mentioned above only covers science courses, so claims about other subjects should be treated with caution.
Common 5E Lesson Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Many 5E mistakes happen when a teacher gives the answer too early or treats a step as a formality. BSCS has published a checklist of teacher and student behaviors that are and are not consistent with each step. Five mistakes stand out.
Explaining during Engage: BSCS lists lecturing and defining terms as not consistent with this step. Instead, ask a question and listen.
Giving answers during Explore: Telling students how to solve the problem or leading them step-by-step removes the evidence-gathering that later steps depend on. Ask probing questions instead.
Exploring without a goal: BSCS warns against students ‘playing around’ and says that an Explore activity should have a clear question to answer.
Leading students step-by-step in Elaborate: BSCS lists this as not being consistent with this step. Instead, pose a new but related problem and let students choose their approach.
Testing only vocabulary in Evaluate: BSCS lists testing terms and isolated facts as not consistent with this step. Ask students to explain ideas using evidence.
5E vs 7E: What Is the Difference?
The 7E model adds 2 stages to the 5E sequence: Elicit and Extend. Science educator Arthur Eisenkraft proposed it in 2003. Elicit comes before Engage and gets students to express prior understanding. Extend comes after Evaluate and lets students transfer their learning to a new context. Eisenkraft kept Engage as a separate stage. The 7E model adds support for building prior understanding and transferring learning, which may be useful when students have strong misconceptions. The 5E model has fewer steps to plan, so choose the one that fits your time and unit goal.
Conclusion
A 5E lesson plan gives teachers a clear order for inquiry-based learning: engage students, let them explore, explain the ideas, elaborate on them, and evaluate understanding. The research behind it is strongest for science and for teachers who use all 5 steps. The biggest risk is giving answers too early. To get started, choose one upcoming topic and write a student learning goal. Design the Explore activity first, and then build the rest of the 4 steps around it. Test the sequence with one class, note where students got stuck, and then adjust before you plan the next unit.
FAQ
Can I use a 5E lesson plan outside of science?
Yes. BSCS has applied the 5Es to content areas such as health, and the math example above shows how the steps can work for that area.
Does the 5E model work for every grade level?
Teachers use the 5E model from elementary school to university, but research findings vary by level. A meta-analysis of 38 science studies found the strongest effect on achievement at university level and the weakest at elementary level.
Do the 5 steps have to follow a strict order?
The order matters most for Explore and Explain. Research on the learning cycle found that students learned best when they explored before the teacher introduced terms. Teachers can still shorten or repeat a step when students need it.
How is a 5E lesson different from a lecture followed by a lab?
A traditional lesson gives content first and then uses an activity to confirm it. A 5E lesson reverses that. In one North Carolina study reported by BSCS (Maidon and Wheatley, 2001), fifth graders using a 5E-based program averaged 31.21 on an end-of-grade test, compared with 26.10 for students in an activity-based program that gave content first. BSCS reports this study in its own review, so treat it as one data point.
