7E Essentials

The evolution of the 7E

5E 7E

Elicit
Engage
Engage
Exploration
Explore Explore
Invention
Explain Explain
Discovery Elaborate
Elaborate
Evaluate
(Karplus & Their, 1967)
Evaluate
Extend
(Bybee, 1997)
Eisenkraft (2003)
 Elicit
Engage

Extend Evaluate 7E Explore

Instructional
Model

Elaborate Explain
7E emphasizes…

Transfer of learning

Importance of eliciting
prior knowledge
ELICIT (prior knowledge)

• New knowledge is built on existing knowledge

• Asking “What do you think” questions (to begin the
conversation)
• No need to arrive at consensus or closure; teacher may not tell the
“right answer”
ENGAGE
• Capture students’ attention
• provide the “HOOK” for why the students need to learn the topic
• Get students’ thinking about the subject matter
• Raise questions in students’ minds
• Raise “The BIG questions”
• Stimulate thinking (focus)
• The goal is to continue to excite and interest students in whatever
ways possible
Activities to Elicit and Engage
• Pose a question
• Present a challenge to be solved
• Use of graphic organizers
• Provide a demo
• Show a video clip
• Share an experience
EXPLORE
• Observing, recording data, isolating variables, designing and
planning experiments, creating graphs, interpreting results,
developing hypotheses, and organizing findings (Eisenkraft,
2003)
• Hands-on activities
• Students collaborate
Ways to Explore
Provide opportunities for students to:
• Plan activities where students perform experiments, make graphs and
develop hypotheses
• Observe and collect data
• Make predictions from demonstrations
EXPLAIN
• Students are introduced to models, laws, and theories (summarize
results based on these theories)
• Teacher guides students towards a coherent and consistent
generalization, helps students with distinct scientific vocabulary, and
provides questions that help students use this vocabulary to explain
the results of their explorations
ELABORATE (applying knowledge)

• Applying knowledge to new domains/contexts

• Raising new questions and hypotheses to explore
• Emphasizes “transfer of learning”
• From one concept to another
• One subject to another
• School activities to non-school related activities
EXTEND (practicing the transfer of learning)

• Extend the concept learned

• Students challenge what they have already learned
EVALUATE
• Formative or summative
• Evaluation should be done
during all interactions with
students
Why use 7E?