Concept Development

The basics of this model is that students are sharing their

understanding of a concept and then rework their
understanding through interaction with their peers through
the development process. Since students are sharing their
current understanding, this model works well as a pre-
assessment because the teacher can see what students
already know about the concept. This model also has the
bonus of dispelling misconceptions about a topic and works
great as a formative assessment, or as a tool for organizing
essays or presentations.

Steps of the Model

1. List as Many Items as Possible that are Associated

with the Subject (aka Brainstorming). Let your
students be creative in answering, and dont interrupt
their thought process. If a misconception arises then
intervene and correct it.
2. Group the Items because they are alike in some way.
This is where you and the class examine the
relationships between the terms. What is super
important is not to leave anything out, include every
 term.
3. Label the Groups by Defining the Reasons for
Grouping. Once all of the groups are made and all
terms are in a group have students explain their
reasoning for their groupings. Notice this is probably
going to happen at the same time as step
4. Regroup or Subsume Individual Items or Whole
Groups Under Other Groups. This is where you want
to expose students to another perspective, if they are
grouping a term one way, show a perspective that
might put that term into another group, this is
essentially a way to question previous groupings.
5. Synthesize the Information by Summarizing the Data
and Forming Generalizations. Students summarize the
trends in one or two sentences, there might be a
generalization for each group as well as an umbrella
generalization.
6. Evaluate Students Progress by Assessing their Ability
to Generate a wide Variety of Items and to Group
Those Items Flexibly. Look for improved flexibility in
learning over time.
To save time or to make sure certain items are
included, the teacher may provide the brainstorming
items and have the students group them.
The teacher may provide the labels. For example,
 having students labelling the groups themselves, but
then you provide the specific labels in step 4.
What is awesome about this is that you dont necessarily
have to have terms that you group together, but maybe
graphs. If you were teaching students about different
graphs such as absolute values, square roots, exponential,
logarithmic, polynomials, they all have unique features that
could be grouped differently. This is awesome because you
could do a great review or a pre-assessment, and if you
structure it right, even a dang awesome lesson.