Deputy Principal (Andrew Healey)
Concept Attainment
We want our students to go beyond the remembering of facts or rote learnt skills to one where they see patterns or concepts. Students need opportunities to generalise, summarise, and draw conclusions by looking at their learning at a big picture level at times. As teachers, we just need to reflect on the unit of work being covered or the objectives from the course outline and see where these are taking the students. These three questions can assist us in ensuring there is meaning behind what we do:
- From the facts or skills being taught, which concepts are at the heart of the learning?
- Which connections between concepts would we like students to make as a result of the learning?
- What opportunities for application and transfer can we design to help students take their learning further?
The last question is about looking for opportunities to make learning more worthwhile; put into practice what is learnt. If we think about past PL activities where we have learnt something. Unless we regularly put the PL into practice it may become irrelevant. Graphic organisers are a great tool to guide students to develop a better understanding of concepts or big picture ideas.