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I am currently a student teacher placed in a first grade self-contained classroom. I created a 5E lesson to teach the life cycle of a butterfly, but when creating the lesson plan I had difficulty in determining how to teach the life cycle of a butterfly. Most first graders already have knowledge and are aware of the life cycle of a butterfly, as to why I had difficulty on how to teach it. Often times students are just told 'this is the life cycle of ___ animal, know the steps'. Which brings me to question, why? Why does this egg turn into this, and then this? I think that teaching this concept should go beyond just telling students, 'this is the life cycle', but how do we do it? Especially for 6 and 7 years olds to understand. For my lesson, I had decided to utilize Eric Carle's, The Very Hungry Caterpillar so students could have a better understanding. However, I feel like it wasn't too engaging and mostly focused on showing students the steps. Just using the book wouldn't be enough because it doesn't go on detail as to how many days are in each stage. This kind of leads to my next question, how do we find enough time to teach concepts in details and in engaging ways? I feel that often times there is not enough time to teach a 5E lessons, I love the idea of them, but time is an issue. 

Yanely, 

I think you've asked a very good question.  I am a preservice teacher and will be student teaching this coming up spring semester. I think we need to make time to teach concepts in detail.  If our students don't know what we mean and we keep moving forward they can be lacking crucial information. I think taking a step back to explain concepts and misconceptions to our students should be a priority and then we can get into the part of the lesson where we get them more engaged. So first, I'd start by breaking down the material I have prepared to teach.  Depending on the topic, I would then try to make what I'm teaching engaging; whether it's using a vocabulary word sort or bringing in items some students can feel and see differences.  This could be done in small groups or it could be a guided inquiry as a whole class.  There's many ways to get students engaged and to teach details that can be considered complicated for our young learners but taking the time to do so is what will make the difference. 

Kristen