Strategy

Strategy: Concept Attainment Strategy
Appropriate Grade Level: K-6
Procedures/Steps:
(3 Phases)
Phase One: The students examine the concept and form a hypothesis about its attributes. Teachers don’t reveal the concept to the students in advance; they must have the students engage in reasoning to determine the concept themselves. Teachers show students several pictures of the concept. The pictures should be positive examples and negative examples of the concept. Teachers then put all the students’ hypothesis on a visual screen.
Phase Two: Students test and confirm their idea and learn the name of the concept presented.Teachers show unlabeled examples and non examples of the concept. Students respond to the pictures to decide if the example shown is an example of the hypotheses they created. Teachers then confirm the student’s hypothesis by restating their definition of the concept and connect their definitions with the actual term.
Phase Three:The students analyze the thinking strategies they used to derive the new concept. Students describe how they formulated their hypothesis of the concept. Students then discuss the characteristics from the original picture that helped them come up with their hypothesis and why it was correct or incorrect. Employing both visual and auditory senses imprints a strong connection in student’s minds between the concept, vocabulary, and the language to identify the concept.
Comments and/or tips:
  • This strategy engages students in real world applications.
  • Useful for instructing ELLS, Students with Special needs, and gifted students.
  • Teachers can choose to add additional visuals in the form of graphic organizers or Venn diagrams
  • Connecting what is known and unknown is the basis of developing this strategy and ensures lasting learning.
  • Develops thinking, generalization, and reasoning skills
  • Teachers can use this strategy to teach vocabulary concepts in narrative and expository texts.

Source:
Boulware, B. J., & Crow, M. J. (2008). Using the concept attainment strategy to enhance reading comprehension. Retrieved from

CONCEPT = CLOCK

Phase One / Phase Two / Phase Three
Positive Images

Negative Images


Then they need to be grouped into yes and no boxes. / Further Postive Images

Further Negative Images

Teachers can identify the name of the concept for the students and connect their descriptions and definitions with the actual term clock. / -Students describe how they formulate their hypothesis of the concept of clock.
-In their own words they need to come to the conclusion that clocks are instruments that people use to view the linear progression of time.
-Then discuss why their hypothesis was correct or incorrect and what they have learned.