Concept Attainment

Known as "concept attainment", this week's offering is also a social-emotional opportunity to reflect on the behavior that is now a media focus…civility.

In the words of Barrie Bennett and Carol Rolheiser in their book Beyond Monet:  The Artful Science of Instructional Integration, everything one sees, touches, feels, and tastes is a concept.  Concepts are the building blocks for communication…concept attainment is one approach that brings clarity to concepts – and clarity often enriches life.  Concept Attainment is an inductive strategy developed by Jerome Bruner.

I'm going to make this look easy, but I highly recommend you read further.  Beyond Monet is an excellent resource.

Here are the phases, followed by two examples – one for SEL, one for academic content:

1 – provide a focus statement and present the data set

2 – students share their thinking and hypotheses

3 – application and extension of the concept

Example #1 – Words of Appreciation (focus statement)

(data set)YES: NO: TESTERS:

thank nasty compliment             helpful stupid don't           value hate stop           like hurt enjoy

(Students share their thinking…and maybe add another word to each column, or write examples for each column [application and extension])

Example #2 – Good sentences for a 'response to literature'

(data set)

YES

• The reader is given some
  clues, like the name “Mr. Graves”, that there is something sinister about the
  lottery.
• One point the author makes
  in this story is the danger of peer pressure.
• I wondered why the author
  spent so much detail on people picking up rocks for a lottery, because the two
  don’t seem to go together.
• I didn’t like the ending
  because it led me to believe that Tessie was killed, but it was never
  confirmed.

NO

• This story makes you sad
  cause someone dies.
• If you win, you get killed -
  that’s messed up.
• I didn’t like how unfair it
  was.
• The point is you don’t want
  to win the lottery.
• I like how you don’t know
  what is going to happen.

TESTERS

• The ending was stupid.
• The author makes you feel
  sad at the end because Tessie is killed for no reason.
• It was a weird story,
  because it was so believable, until the end.
• The author used
  foreshadowing and symbolism throughout the story.
• The black box gives you the
  feeling that something bad is going to happen.
• I thought the story was
  confusing.
• I thought the story was
  confusing because I had a hard time understanding the way people were talking

(Students share their thinking, and then edit one another's rough drafts, looking for sentences that need correcting [no 'you'] or those needing more detail or explanation.)

Bennett and Rolheiser, in their 52-page chapter on Concept Attainment, write:  Remember:  It will likely take 15-20 practices before you and your students own Concept Attainment and it doesn't own you!

We'd love to hear what you do with this.  Email us at tribes@tribes.com and we'll post on teachcommunity.com