This week’s assignment has been a bit overwhelming. After reading all the resources and watching all of the videos and visiting all of the sites I thought that I had an understanding of what a STEM lesson was and realized that I often incorporate these aspects into my teaching. I also realized that I was familiar with the 5 E’s lesson model from my undergraduate work. I really thought that designing the lesson would be somewhat easy, that was, until I started taking what I had written out on paper and began putting it into the provided template.

When I read about the 5 E’s lesson model in Chapter 5 of Becoming a better science teacher: 8 steps to high quality instruction and student achievement, I realized that this was something that I was taught in my teacher preparation courses, and was doing in my classroom. I wanted to create a STEM lesson that I would be using in the fall when school started and began working it out on paper using the Illinois State Standards and the district curriculum. When I had a solid plan down on paper and had my labs, worksheets, and assessments completed I began to enter my information into the lesson plan template. Who knew that a seven page document could elicit such anger and frustration from me? I realize, after my very rational husband pointed out, that a portion of it was probably my hormones as I am seven months pregnant and prone to crazy mood swings right now. I really felt that the template provided was overly confusing, repetitive, and not something that a teacher would realistically use.

It took me way too long to fill in the template, but when it was all said in done I have a lesson that I can use in my classroom this fall. I can use this lesson to introduce my students to inquiry and incorporate the components of a STEM lesson. I will continue to use the 5E’s lesson model, and incorporate the components of a STEM lesson, but outside of class would never plan a lesson using the template that was provided.