Teaching and Learning

Thank you to Mr Talbot who kicked off the first session of our Learning and Teaching Club. Mr Talbot presented on the Concept Attainment Strategy which engages students in forming their own definition of a concept by examining the attributes of several examples and non-examples of the word, concept, or topic. With the Concept Attainment strategy, students use cognitive strategies and higher order thinking skills, such as classifying, identifying characteristics and relationships, testing hypotheses, and applying new ideas while using the target vocabulary and concept. They must discriminate between what is and what is not an example of the target concept. Concept Attainment can be used at any level, and is a good differentiating technique, since students’ guesses are so varied.With this strategy, the target concept or idea is not communicated to the students. The teacher presents examples (verbal or pictures), and the students guess the concept by figuring out the common attributes. Thanks again to Mr Talbot, and to all teachers who attended.