University of Saskatchewan > College of Education > EDCUR 200 > Instructional Methods

CONCEPT FORMATION

Sample Lesson for Concept Formation

Background

Just as described in the description of a concept attainment method, people classify. It is what humans do. Probably other animals also classify – food, not-food; dangerous, not-dangerous, etc. All objects, actions, processes can be classified in one way or another. A concept formation lesson is, in some ways, the opposite of a concept attainment lesson. Where in a concept attainment lesson, you give your students examples of objects/actions/processes already classified the way you want them to classify them, in a concept formation lesson, you give your students a lot of objects/actions/processes, and the students choose how to classify them.

You would choose for your students to do a concept formation activity if it didn't matter very much if they came up with the same concept as the experts who study these objects/actions/processes or not (if you were mostly interested in their thinking), or if the classification schemes would almost certainly be formed in the way the experts form them. In other words, you would use it when the particular concept didn’t really matter, or when the results would be relatively unambiguous. This is a good model to use to help students understand how much we classify in our regular lives, and how there are different rationales for different classifications.

The purpose of concept formation as a teaching strategy is to have your students examine carefully some objects/actions/processes, and to think about a method for classifying them. Both observation and classification are important to humans in all cultures. Indeed, the more carefully your students observe, the more interesting the questions they will come up with.

Another point is that different groups of people classify differently. This model could be useful for pointing out some of the different classification schemes in different geographic, cultural or discipline areas. For example, in biology, peanuts are considered a bean, not a nut. However, for medical doctors, people who are allergic to peanuts are often allergic to nuts, and are rarely allergic to beans. Therefore, the plant taxonomist's classification scheme is useless for a medical researcher. A botanist classifies plants by evolutionary similarities, a horticulturaliss by purpose for growing the plants, a gardener by the effect the plant has in the garden.

This model encourages certain of the Common Essential Learnings. The most obvious are critical and creative thinking, communication, and of course, independent learning. Personal and social values and skills might be included if you help your students work in a positive way with their peers. As well, the students could use their numeracy as they sort into sets and subsets.

As with concept attainment lessons, concept formation lessons are best done in small groups.

Practicalities

Set up:

• Give the students a number of materials. These might be written, they might be "thoughts" (tell them to think of different animals for example), or they might be real things. It is preferable, but sometimes impossible, to have the students work with real objects/actions/processes.
• Tell the students to classify the materials in a way that makes sense. If you would like your students to focus on a particular aspect of the materials, tell them to focus on this aspect. This can be done by having them classify the materials as would a newspaper editor, or as a restaurant owner. You choose the person they are to be based on what aspect of the materials you want them to focus on.
• You might or might not have activities for the students to do with the materials so the students will study them in different ways. If you want them to focus on the results of these activities for forming their concepts, you will ask them to focus on these results.
• You will probably put your students into small groups. Choose groups so they will work effectively together.
• If you wish to minimize your supervisory role, choose materials that are relatively safe to work with.

Carry out:

• The students study the materials and organize them according to some sort of rationale. They are to make their rationale explicit to their peers. Their rationales could be considered hypotheses for why some materials belong together and others do not.
• The teacher's role at this stage is to meander through the classroom, observing the students at work. You will act as referee and coach. If students are hesitant about "taking initiative", or if they are not testing the materials in a way in which they could, you might encourage them to go on with more tests.
• During this time, you could make anecdotal records, or fill in checklists of student actions.

Debrief:

For every teaching strategy involving a debrief, I will suggest a different method. There are a number of ways in which debriefs can be done. Please mix and match the different forms of debriefs you use. In all large group (six or more students), encourage your students to use their conversation skills.

• Have each group of students explain their rationales for the classification systems to the whole class.
• Draw attention to the different ways in which students classify if this is the purpose of the activity.
• Draw attention to the diverse observations - different groups will have observed different aspects of the same objects.
• If you expected your students to form a particular concept, and they haven't, think of why they wouldn't have. What background knowledge were they lacking, or what background knowledge contributed in to them understanding the concepts in unique ways? What other materials might have helped them to form the concept you wanted them to form? Or, might a concept attainment lesson have been more appropriate for this concept?

Final Check:

Once the students have organized their materials, give them one or more extras and ask them to fit these in with the groups they have made. This is a way for them to test their hypothetical categories. If they can fit the new materials in to the concepts they already have, then they should be content with the concepts they formed. (Until some time in the future when they find a material that won't fit the scheme!)

Hints:

During the debrief, you will learn the students' conceptions, and determine in what ways you can improve their learning - improve their moving towards the conception accepted by scientists or historians or writers, etc. (if learning the subject area classification scheme was your learning objective). It is during the debrief that you will decide what extra tests the students should carry out, or what extra materials to supply for the last stage, the final check. The next time you do this lesson, it will be perfect (well – maybe not. But a closer approximation of perfect.)

Examples of Concept Formation ideas for lessons:

Give your students:

• twenty different kinds of seeds, a scalpel for dissecting them, and a hand lens for observing them. Ask them to classify the seeds into groups, and to be explicit about the rationale they are using.
• samples of foods and have one group classify the foods as if they were preparing a meal for a family, another as if they were growing and producing the foods, another as if they were a grocery store manager, another as if they were preparing a gourmet meal for a restaurant.
• have your students build play-dough scale models of the planets, and to research and write descriptions of each planet. Then they are to classify the planets considering at least two different factors. (In other words, the two different factors must put the planets into the same groups. For example, if your students were to use the factors of size and distance from the sun, there would be three groups - the four small and close planets, the four large and distant planets, and Pluto in a category of its own.)
• have your students classify examples of different books they have read or movies they will probably have watched.
• have your students classify different countries based on population data – population density, average life span, health statistics, average income, etc.
• have your students classify different sports.