Engage through Evaluate

5E Lesson Plan Template

The five phases as five rows, each with what the teacher does, what students do, and time and materials. A misconceptions box underneath, because the Explore phase is where you hear them.

Five phases, three columns

5E lesson plan template

Portrait 5E lesson plan with five phase rows from Engage to Evaluate and three columns for teacher actions, student actions, and time and materials

Word Google Docs

5E Lesson Plan — Word & Google Docs

Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate as rows, with what the teacher does, what students do, and time and materials as columns.

Download Word Open in Google Docs

PDF

5E Lesson Plan — fillable PDF

One page, portrait. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

Download fillable PDF

Specifications: US Letter, 8.5 × 11 inches. Word files are editable .docx that open in Word 2007 through Microsoft 365, including Word for Mac; the Google Docs link makes a copy in your own Drive; the PDF has real form fields and prints as plain hairline boxes when blank. Free to use in as many classes as you like, no account, no watermark.

Why it is laid out this way

About the 5e lesson plan template

The 5E model is the inquiry format science teachers are most often asked for, and it is used well beyond science. Engagement surfaces what students already think; exploration gives them a shared experience before any explanation; explanation names what they found; elaboration applies it somewhere new; evaluation checks it. The template keeps the phases in that order and gives each one a full row, because a 5E lesson that compresses Explore to make room for Explain has stopped being a 5E lesson.

The phase names and their definitions are from the five-phase instructional model described by BSCS (Bybee and colleagues, 2006). The layout is ours. A science version with the three NGSS dimensions and a safety line is planned for the subjects set.

Questions teachers ask

5E Lesson Plan lesson plans, answered

Does every 5E lesson need all five phases in one period?

No. A 5E cycle often runs across two or three class periods, with Explore taking a whole one. Date the sheet by phase rather than by day if that is how the unit falls, or use one sheet per cycle and write the day in the time column.

What is the difference between Explain and Elaborate?

Explain is where the concept gets its name and its rules, after students have explored it. Elaborate is where they use it on a new problem or in a new context. If the Elaborate row reads like more Explain, the lesson is missing its transfer.

Is the 5E name free to use?

Yes. BSCS describes the model openly and the phase names are descriptive; we attribute the model on the sheet. That is not true of every framework teachers search for — some are registered marks — which is why a few templates in this section carry descriptive names instead.