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December 30, 2004
Teaching in the Content Areas
Concept-Based Instruction Model
Rethinking Instructional Delivery for Diverse Student Populations: Serving All Learners with Concept-Based InstructionJan D. McCoy and Leanne R. Ketterlin-Geller
Intervention in School and Clinic, Vol. 40 No. 2, Nov. 2004 (pp.88-95)
“When students arrive at content classes reading below grade level, teachers are challenged to deliver complex content. Also, students often study facts without reaching larger concepts. Research at the University of Oregon has concluded that if the teacher takes responsibility for identifying and elucidating the concept within course materials, both of these difficulties can be overcome. Overt identification of concepts and their characteristics and the deliberate use of graphic organizers reduce the reading comprehension demands placed on students with low abilities. Using the functional taxonomy presented, teachers can develop effective student exercises and assessments. An example shows that students provided with the concept-based approach outperformed students in a more traditional classroom on a problem-solving task.” (p. 88)
Struggling readers often focus on decoding text at the expense of understanding material. Teachers need a strategy that supports students with cognitive disabilities and specialized learning needs while still advancing the learning of other students in the classroom. Most information in textbooks is purely factual and fails to show how discrete facts can be linked together to form complex knowledge forms.
Concept-Based Model
3 Components:
1. The teacher determines the concept that is the target of
instruction.
2. A graphic organizer is developed to illuminate this concept for
the students.
3. Students’ success in mastering the concept is measured by
applying it across instances using increasingly complex critical
thinking measures.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers explicitly illustrate the structure and organization of information. By constructin a avisual disply of relevant content material, students are able to link prior knowledge with new learning, thereby deepening their level of understanding the marterial. Visual representation of the structure and organization of relevant information.
2 Elements:
- Overt identification of subject-specific concepts
- Creation and completion of graphic organizers
Posted by Kristie at December 30, 2004 09:55 AM