Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers

Our hope is that this blog will become a forum in which people can exchange ideas on how to recruit, develop and retain exceptional Jewish educators through mentoring and e-mentoring students, teaching candidates, and teachers in our day and supplemental schools. The present focus of this blog is to empower Jewish teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, consultants, and staff developers to integrate web technology (i.e. web tools and apps) into their teaching and teacher training.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Title of Lesson: What is the Concept Attainment Model of Teaching? Part Three

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices. This is one of many lessons we will be sharing on teaching Judaic content, lesson planning, models of teaching, differentiated and individualized instruction and learning activities designed to transform the classroom into a Jewish community of cooperative learners. The title of this lesson is “What is the Concept Attainment Model of Teaching?” Since there are 13 elements in each lesson plan we will divide this lesson plan into four parts. Here are the first and second parts of this four part lesson on the concept attainment model of teaching. The third part follows.

4. After students have had individual think time (e.g. 60 seconds) to compare the examples with the non-examples, the teacher invites students to form dyads to share and compare their thinking. They record their individual and collective thoughts in the middle column. The teacher then facilitates a class discussion on his/her concept and records the students' guesses on the board.

5. The teacher then shares two more examples and non examples, gives students time to discuss their thinking with their learning partners, and asks students (a) if any student (or dyad) knows the teacher's concept and (b) can give an example and a non-example of the concept. See the handout at the top of the post. The teacher elicits student examples, and if their answers are correct, he or she records their responses on the Guess My Concept chart.

6. The teacher continues this process of adding two examples and two non-examples until all or most of the students have attained the concept. At the top of this post you will find a Sample Guess My Concept Chart with Eleven Examples and Non-Examples.

7. The teacher then asks the students to share the thinking processes they used to attain the teacher's concept. Did they use trial and error or simultaneous scanning? Did they encounter roadblocks or false leads in their thinking? What clue or what was said that helped them guess the teacher's concept?

In the next post we will share the fourth part of a four part lesson on the Concept Attainment Model of Teaching.