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BY CHERYL MIZERNY · PUBLISHED 01/15/2017
The majority of the instruction in my classroom is informed by my knowledge of and fondness for constructivist learning strategies. I am not a fan of the traditional lecture “sit and get” format of teaching.
I much prefer that the students’ brains are working at least as hard as mine. To that end, I have found great success using the Concept Attainment strategy.
Concept Attainment is a form of structured inquiry based upon the research of psychologist Jerome Bruner. In a nutshell, Concept Attainment is when students must determine common attributes within a group of examples provided by the teacher.
In 1956, psychologist Jerome Bruner published “A Study of Thinking.” Bruner was interested in cognitive processing – how people think, and how those tendencies might be used to inform teaching and learning processes. He developed a new way of introducing learners to new concepts called Concept Attainment. – TeachThought
Developing and facilitating a Concept Attainment lesson is relatively simple. First, the instructor determines the concept to be learned (for example, “What is a metaphor?”).
Then the instructor determines several examples and non-examples of the concept. These examples and non-examples are presented to students as such. Working as a group, students determine the common characteristics of the examples and devise a working definition or hypothesis of the concept.
The groups then share their definitions and the teacher provides clarification and correction if necessary. Finally, the teams apply the concept to create new examples with the same attributes.
Here is the technique in action, using the What is a metaphor?question:
As a language arts teacher, I have found numerous topics that I can introduce using the Concept Attainment strategy (“theme,” for example).
Other content areas in which the academic concepts are much more forthright find that this strategy is a perfect introduction to new topics such as classification of animals, types of governments, or mathematical formulas.
I teach my grammar lessons this way as well, and I call them “Sentence Study.” I based this on the work of my friend Jeff Anderson from his book Mechanically Inclined. I tweaked it to work for me.
In my Sentence Study, the examples I give are mentor sentences from the novels we have read in class or others that are popular at the time. Each sentence targets the same grammatical concept (such as placement of commas in direct address). The students then work together to determine what all of the sentences have in common.
We then write an explanation of the rule being studied, and they go back and write or find their own examples. I also do these where each sentence has the exact same error such as in subject-verb agreement. They must determine the error and how it can be corrected.
The students really enjoy learning this way and often get excited anticipating these lessons. I have written before (“Our Students Often Learn Better Together”) about how I use Concept Attainment to help students determine characteristics of a writing genre. This could also be used to teach text structures, writing point of view, irony, spelling patterns, and much more.
I am a huge fan of the Concept Attainment strategy for many reasons.
I can’t tell you how many times students who are typically considered weaker come up with the correct attributes first. Perhaps this is because they have no problem thinking creatively and outside the box.
As I wander the room during group discussions, if I see that a student is struggling to be heard (and has the correct answer), I will pause the group and throw a leading question their way or point out the student who I feel “has a good point” that was not acknowledged.
I have never seen this strategy be one in which a certain student is always correct or incorrect. All are successful at some point. If you have not tried a lesson like this, I highly encourage you to give it a go. You might find that you enjoy it as much as the children.
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