Running Head: UNDERSTANDING MODEL AND CONCEPT ATTAINMENT STRATEGY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course 6630: Instructional Models and Strategies,

Week Three Application: The Understanding Model and Concept Attainment Strategy

APP3Mscally (50 points)

Michael Patrick Scally

http://www.M_Scally@Hotmail.com

March 18, 2006

 

Dr. Trudy Driskell

 

Week 3:  The Understanding Model and Concept Attainment Strategy - Application   

 

 

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Application: Concept Attainment Lesson

Step One: Introduction

The acquisition of new concepts can be difficult for students and is best taught in an active learning situation. In the Concept Attainment strategy, students formulate concepts by making decisions about what attributes belong in certain categories. Select a concept that you have had difficulty teaching in the past and consider ways to teach that concept more effectively using this strategy. Use the content from Video Programs Five and Six and the Required Reading to inform your response.

Step Two: Individual Response

Develop a lesson using the Concept Attainment strategy according to the following criteria:

When complete, save the assignment as APP3+your first initial+last name. For example, Sally Ride's assignment would read "APP3SRide". Submit this assignment via the Dropbox. Use the "Submit an Assignment" link, choose the Week 3: Application basket, then add your Application as an attachment.

Dr. Harvey Silver has done a remarkable job of presenting the Concept Attainment Strategy (Canter & Associates, 1996), as he has all the teaching strategies in this course (Videos Five and Six). It may be said that he has in fact done too good of a job explaining this strategy as he has made it seem much easier to teach this strategy than it is to do it yourself. A case in point is that I thought I would use the concept of democracy for this assignment. It was only after I had thought a great deal about all of the possible types of government and existing examples for each that the students might know, that I decided to choose another concept. It was then that I saw in our text (Silver, et al, 1996), “Identifying the critical or essential attributes in abstract or complex concepts such as culture, democracy, and leadership, however, may be quite difficult.” I have found this to be a very true statement. I then searched my memory for other concepts that I had previously had difficulty teaching. The difficult part of this chore, I am embarrassed to say, is that I seem to have had many concepts that I found difficult to teach to my students. The one I have chosen, however, is about literary devices.

When I began teaching fourteen years ago I was fortunate enough to teach junior high language arts. I was even more fortunate to take possession of an eighth grade class composed mainly of very smart and very opinionated girls. While speaking to other teachers I learned that these girls had run or attempted to run their classrooms for many years. Every former teacher, it seemed, had a large collection of anecdotes about this class, but for some reason, did not want to share them with me. Instead they would smile, wish me good luck, and go back to their own work. It was during my first two weeks of teaching that I remembered something one of my college professors had told us. She said, “Just because you are the teacher and the only adult, don’t assume you are the smartest one in the room.” Her adage was true when she said it, it was once again true, I determined, as I looked out upon that eighth grade class, very true. These not so fond memories somehow reminded me of my first literary devices lessons.

I hope to once again teach Language Arts in the coming year, so for the purposes of this assignment and my future in teaching, I looked up the Montana content standard that applies to literary devices. Reading Content Standard 2 - Students apply a range of skills and strategies to read. The rationale for this standard is: Readers use a variety of strategies to construct meaning. Some of these strategies include phonics, grammatical structure, use of context clues, and self-monitoring. The student reads fluently by adjusting rate according o purpose, material, and understanding. Varied experiences with literature develop a rich vocabulary for lifelong learning and an understanding of the elements of fiction and nonfiction. More specifically,

Benchmark 8.3 applies. It reads, “Identify and compare literary devices 3. Identify, analyze, and evaluate the language and exaggeration). (e.g., figurative language, exaggeration, use of literary devices (e.g., irony, humor, dialogue).” As it would take up too much space for this assignment (and the fact that I have not been a masochist for almost fourteen years), I have chosen to use only one literary device concept for this activity. The literary device (I hope you will notice) is humor.

According to my dictionary (Guralnik, 1984) there are many definitions for humor, however, the most appropriate one  for this instance is, “4. the quality that makes something seem funny, amusing, or ludicrous; comicality (Page 684). Online searching found the following (Dictionary.com, 2006): “humor n 1: a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter [syn: wit, humour, witticism, wittiness] 2: the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor" [syn: humour, sense of humor, sense of humour] 3: a characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state of feeling; "whether he praised or cursed me depended on his temper at the time"; \"he was in a bad humor" [syn: temper, mood, humour] 4: the quality of being funny; "I fail to see the humor in it" [syn: humour].

A Concept Attainment Strategy Activity

I would begin this concept attainment strategy by explaining the objective of the lesson (for students to know and understand what constitutes humor as a literary device and how to use humor in their writing). I would then help them to further understand the concept of humor used as a literary device by using the following anticipatory hooks, jokes that need punch lines:

1.      What do you call a tax on people who are bad at math? Answer: the lottery.

2.      Where do dogs go when they lose their tails? Answer: the retail store.

3.      Steven Wright One Liner of the Day: I bought a house, on a one-way dead-end road. I don't know how I got there.

Then, as always happens when school kids hear jokes, they want to tell their favorites. We would then listen to several examples of humorous jokes and those not humorous. (I would also give them the following background knowledge: [HUMOUR (Glossary, 2006) - In a comprehensive modern theory of laughter and humour, philosopher John Morreall proposes that "laughter results from a pleasant psychological shift." This theory embraces the three classical theories of humour: a) the Superiority Theory found in Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, in which we laugh at the misfortunes of others, which thus reflect our own superiority; b) the Incongruity Theory, of Kant and Schopenhauer, in which we laugh at something that violates our expectations; c) the Relief Theory, of Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Sigmund Freud, in which we laugh to relieve nervous energy (The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor 128-138). See also Chapter 1 of Victor Raskin's Semantic Mechanisms of Humor.] I would, however, need to be careful hear to warn the students that inappropriate jokes would not be tolerated and then follow-up with consequences if they tell one. I would have them pair up to tell one another their jokes for five minutes. We would then regroup as an entire class, ask for jokes to be told to the entire class, and I would write the attributes of each joke. Those jokes that were funny and had merit would go into the “Yes” column on the board while those unfunny jokes would go into the “No” column on the board. We would discuss the attributes of each joke at length and compare the characteristics shared by those attributes in the “Yes” column. I would then write down the characteristics common to the “Yes” column jokes.

Then, after comparing and contrasting the essential attributes of humor as a class, we would make a list of these attributes. The students would again pair up to generate hypotheses for ten minutes. After ten minutes I would call them all together once again to discuss their hypotheses and to discuss them and to come to an agreement on one hypothesis. The students would then compose a their definition of the concept of humor as a literary device.

During the next class period the students would use their definition of humor to try to begin using the literary device in a writing assignment. I would assign a topic they might find interesting at the time, for example, something to do with basketball, and ask them to compose a short story. They would not have to use a great deal of humor in their stories, but they would have to identify when they did use humor by printing their humor in red ink. I believe this could be a very fun activity for all involved to do in order to teach and learn a difficult concept – humor as a literary device.

References

Dictionary.com (2006). lexico publishing group, LLC. retrieved march 17, 2006, at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=humor.

Glossary of terms. (2006). Retrieved March 18, 2006, from http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=RNWG%2CRNWG%3A2005-44%2CRNWG%3Aen&q=teaching+literary+devices+%2Bhumor .

Guralnik, David B. (Ed.). (1984). Webster’s new world dictionary of the american language (second college edition. deluxe color edition.) Cleveland: simon and Schuster.

Montana Social Studies Content Standards.2000. Retrieved March 9, 2006 from  http://www.oocities.org/mkscally/SSConStandards.pdf

Silver, H. F., Hanson, J. R., Strong, R. W., & Schwartz, P. B. (1996). Teaching styles & strategies. Trenton, NJ: The Thoughtful Education Press.