Hierarchic: 4 Main Ideas

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Name:

Rebecca Wesley
Is about

Date:

9/25/2013

Concept-Attainment
Main idea Main idea

Designed to help students of all ages elaborate and reinforce their understanding of concepts and practice critical thinking. Through the presentation of both examples of a concept and non-examples so the students can come to a conclusion on what the concept is.
Main idea Main idea

Planning

Implementing

Assessment

Motivation

Takes place through 4 steps: -Topic: there must be some familiarity with the topic and other closely related topics. -Specify Learning Objectives: include helping students develop and elaborate on concepts and the relationships among them, as well as giving critical thinking practice. Learning objectives will dictate the example that are to be used to get the specific objective across. -Examples and Non-examples: should be heterogeneous and in corporate things that are commonly known about the concept and cover misconceptions. -Sequence Examples and Nonexamples: this is crucial because you want the beginning examples/nonexamples to catch their attention and challenge them while also not discouraging them and alternate.

Phase 1: This kind of lesson is very different from most so the first thing to do is make sure to describe all instruction clearly. Phase 2: Display the first example and non-example and begin testing the hypothesis waters. Phase 3: Analysis Cycle- begin adding more examples and nonexamples and between each check with the students to make sure the concept hypothesis is still valid and revise if necessary and have them explain why or why not. Be sure to openly record the hypothesis and even after they are rejected leave them up so the students can still visualize them. Phase 4: Closure-when one hypothesis remains students are asked to identify the essential characteristics of the concept, state a definition, and link it to closely related concepts.

Knowledge and understanding can be assessed summatively through defining the concept, identifying the concepts characteristics, relating the concept to other concepts, and identifying or by providing examples that had not previously been given. The farther down this list of assessments you more the more formative the assessment becomes. Another good way to asses is by assessing critical thinking abilities, which also indirectly assess knowledge because you can not think critically about a topic without some prior knowledge and understanding.

Concept-Attainment activities can be motivational because they are intellectual puzzles in which the students use clues to identify the idea the teacher has in mind. Solving a challenging problem is also emotionally and intellectually satisfying. This concept also capitalizes on the human drive to be social beings.

So what? What is important to understand about this?

The purpose of this is to help students learn to elaborate and develop their understanding of concepts and to develop their critical thinking skills.