Concept Attainment

1. Quadrilaterals
1. First I will present different examples and non-examples of quadrilaterals. These will be a square, rhombus, rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid, triangle, circle, hexagon, etc. I'll present them using educreations on the board and drawing them in front of the students. Students will have whiteboards at their desks. They'll draw a line down the middle and put yes or no at the top. Under yes or no the students will draw each example after we've decided which category each shape goes in.
2. Next I'll ask students to form a hypotheses of what we are drawing. I'll ask the students to share with the class as well as with a partner. I'll write the hypotheses on a new educreations page. Students will still have their whiteboards with the examples and non-examples to refer to as we create hypotheses. Once we've decided on a hypothesis I'll ask students to draw a shape that fits. We'll continue until we have the critical attributes of quadrilaterals figured out.
3. We'll summarize the critical attributes as a class and define the concept. If students haven't figured out the exact name of the concept I'll let them know at this point.
4. Finally I'll ask students to draw a picture using only quadrilaterals on a poster. Some students may need to be put in groups for differentiation. Others may need to use manipulatives.
2. Adverbs
1. Using the dustbin game I created on classtools.net we'll go through the different examples and non-examples of adverbs. Because this game doesn't list the words so students can see them after they've played, I'll have the students get out a paper and copy down the categories and words as we go.
2. Next I'll ask the students to form hypotheses of what we are learning about. I'll guide the students to the correct attributes of adverbs.
3. We'll summarize the critical attributes of adverbs as a class and play the game again.
4. Finally I'll ask the students to create their own dustbin game and test each other.
3. Vertebrates
1. First I'll show pictures of examples and non-examples of vertebrates. (The non-examples will be invertebrates.) We'll place the pictures in the appropriate yes or no columns as a class.
2. I'll ask students to form hypotheses based on the examples and non-examples. We'll keep going until we have the critical attributes of vertebrates.
3. We'll summarize the critical attributes and I'll explain to the students that these attributes describe vertebrates.
4. Students will create a concept map of vertebrates using popplet. I'll walk around and give added support where needed.