Research Article

Literacy in the Learning Cycle

Literacy is such an essential part of elementary learning. Children use literacy to learn to read as well as expand their imaginations. The Five E learning cycle uses trade books and inquiry to successfully learn literacy. The Five-Step cycle includes engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. Trade books are used in various ways to help with the Five E learning cycle.

Engage: 
Trade books can suggest a problem to be fixed, allow students to make predictions, make an activity, and develop questions. This takes students prior knowledge of the given topic and set up questions for students.
Explore:
The explore phase generally handles the hands-on portion of a lesson. This is where students use their prior knowledge from engage and practice with it. Students should learn to ask and answer questions for this part of the cycle.
Explain:
During the explain phase, students are taking what they had learned and practiced (hands-on) and explain to others. They share what they had learned and practiced. They make sense of the activity and develop an understanding for the topic.
Extend:
During this phase, students should take what they have learned and focused on and find trade books that focus on the science topic they had studied. They can use this step to read the trade book of choice to help with their understanding of the topic.
Evaluate:
During the evaluate phase students can use their trade books to find ideas to pose a question or problem. If not all, most answers for this phase are usually right in the selected reading. Students can put all they have learned and focused on and test their ideas during this.

Choosing a trade book is easy. During an inquiry lesson, students can take the lesson topic and take a trade book to help continue growth of the lesson. Students or teachers can form a test of knowledge and a problem from the book that the students can try to solve.

Misconceptions

Ever had any misconceptions?
What misconceptions did you have?
How did they affect you?

Today in my class, the teacher guided us to remember any misconceptions we had on listed topics she had given us. In my group we had topics of: Green plants, Volcanoes, and The Zoo.

Green Plants:

I had to think back to when I was a child and list my misconception of "Green Plants". I had listed that these plants could be trees, leaves, vegetables, and non-living things. As learned, plants are living things. They need sunlight and nutrients to grow.

Volcanoes:

So, thinking back to when I was a child again, I had to list a misconception that I had of volcanoes. I used to think a man was in the middle of the volcano pressing a button to make it erupt. I had also thought the volcanoes had erupted more frequently than they really do. Volcanoes erupt once every few years or more.

The Zoo:

Finally, thinking back one more time to when I was a child I had to think of a misconception I had of the zoo. I had always thought the animals were born and raised in the zoo. I never knew or understood that the animals were taken from their natural habitat.

You can have a misconception about anything. It is interesting to look back to when you were a child to see the many misconceptions you have had of things that are so normal today.

Teaching Inquiry lesson to fifth grade students.

INQUIRY!

Inquiry is the final step of teaching a lesson. In our case, our Inquiry lesson had followed the Direct Instruction lesson. Inquiry lesson planning still takes up quite a bit of time just like Direct Instruction, but not as much. For Inquiry, the students are generally taking over and showing what they have learned. During our lesson, we provided a few beginning powerpoint slides with review so the students can be reminded of what they had learned. Students are creating meaning through doing in Inquiry. It is very essential to remind them what is being taught during the lesson.

Once we had reviewed our previous Direct Instruction lesson, we provided a task and problem for the students to complete. Once they were given the problem, they had to draw a hypothesis and work together to figure out the given problem. Once finished with the work, students are encouraged to present their findings to the rest of the students. As an independent practice, we had provided a letter for the students to write. Try to refrain from saying "homework". Use a more engaging and interesting word so they do not think it is actual homework.

Teaching Direct Instruction Lesson to fifth grade students.

Preparing to teach Direct Instruction is a lot of prepared and practiced work. Direct Instruction is more of teaching the topic so students can gain the full understanding of the lesson. During Direct Instruction, my group and I provided a prepared powerpoint that we had taught to the students. Each slide of the powerpoint was well prepared with different parts of the lesson, "Changes in the Ecosystem." During our lesson, we made sure to stop at every few slides to let the children ponder and think about what they had just learned. Also, during Direct Instruction, we had made sure we provided different quick activities to keep the students engaged and focused. We included different guided practice activities the students took part in. At the end of the lesson, we had given the students a word match worksheet. During this practice, students were able to match the correct vocabulary word to the correct definition. The preparation for Direct Instruction is a long and steady process. Details have to be precise and you really cannot leave anything out. For Direct Instruction, all parts are essential for the student's learning. After much practice and reviewing my group and I had become more confident in what we were preparing and teaching for the students. I feel review and practice on what you are going to be teaching is essential. You as a teacher should always know what you are teaching so the student's will know as well. Practice does make perfect and it will make you more confident while teaching. Also, during Direct Instruction, do not forget to allow the children to stop and ponder! This will help them collect their thoughts and keep them on the right track.