Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction Methods

CBCI Method 1: Intradisciplinary Process Web

A simple and creative way that allows students to make broad generalizations and develop critical thoughts about a topic is through an intradiscriplinary process web. Though this method, students are given a critical topic or question to focus on and can support their thoughts with conceptual understandings in the form of textual evidence, personal beliefs and reflections, relations that topic has with another field, and more from what they read.

The intradisciplinary web is diverse enough that it can be used in many different ways to encourage concept-based learning. Because of this, students are able to make multiple generalizations about what they know and read without overwhelming them with a heavy curriculum. In addition, once these generalizations are made, students make factual and conceptual guiding questions written for each generalization written to further their thought process and engagement in understanding that particular critical topic (Erickson et al, 69). With the intradiscplinary process web, a topic or question is placed in the center of the page with 4 larger boxes surrounding it for each ‘strand’. The strands are predefined as: understanding, responding, critiquing, and producing (Erickson et al., 139).

For example, a topic for student focus could be ‘How Can Life Experiences Transform Me?’ where the conceptual lens would be transformation. Under the understanding text box, students would fill out some of their own hardships or feelings, major events or life experiences they’ve gone through, points of view, possible virtues, etc. Under ‘responding’ students would support their opinions with textual evidence, their reflections, and other personal attitudes. Under ‘producing’ students would fill out written, oral, and visual representations that present or support their ideas. Finally under ‘critiquing’ students would fill out ideas about the text such as the author’s purpose, development of characters, forms of author’s craft, etc.

Other examples of questions or topics that could act as a ‘unit’ could be:

• The Importance of Money vs. Happiness (Conceptual Lens: Money vs. Happiness)
• Is Too Much Power a Bad Thing? (Conceptual Lens: Power)
• Do People Change? (Conceptual Lens: Change)

What is nice about this approach is that it allows students to explore topics through understanding concept-based ideas without needing to dive into a heavy amount of information yet still allowing them to gain critical skills and ‘get the gist’ of broad topic units.

Lesson plan (How to Create an Interdisciplinary Process Web):

1. A ‘unit’ or topic title should be made for student focus
2. A concept should be chosen that gives more detail about the study while allowing for factual and conceptual thinking
3. The predefined strands should be made to surround the topic (as stated above)
4. After students brainstorm their generalizations, they should document their (multiple) ideas under each corresponding strand or category. The number of generalizations written may depend on course curriculum and the length of time spent on that unit
5. Guiding questions should be written in the form of factual, conceptual, or debatable for each generalization made. As a rule, 3-5 factual and conceptual questions should be written along with 2-3 debatable questions for the entire unit
6. The teacher should identify both critical content students should focus their understanding on in that particular unit as well as critical details about key skills
7. Students should be assessed using a scoring guide or rubric to check their understanding of important generalizations and how well they are able to apply key skills in this activity
8. The teacher should design learning activities and opportunities for the students to reflect on their understanding of unit content
9. A unit overview should follow to introduce the study to the students in a way that captures their interest

This classroom method is quite unique, and finding other information about intradisciplinary process webs was difficult. I did have to refer to a website to get a better understanding of the difference between an interdisciplinary approach in the classroom vs. an intradisciplinary approach from this website. I was able to have a clearer idea of how an intradisciplinary process web would work, only focusing small and working within a single branch of discipline unlike an interdisciplinary approach which would integrate multiple disciplines in a larger combination. For a similar idea of how to imagine this graphic organizer, it is somewhat similar to spider mapping, only student ideas would go under the branching bubbles. This video shows a somewhat clear representation of how these webs should be drawn (with the suggestion above!)

CBCI Method 2: Book Talk

When reading classroom material, students are able to make connections with information they read and questions they’re answering to form broad generalizations about a topic.This method uses a graphic organizer to group together 3 boxes for students to include their supporting ideas in connection with a factual question they’re answering. Students have the opportunity to get creative with the information they choose and are able to interpret questions in different ways depending on how they support their findings. At the end, students are to answer a conceptual question by including a broad generalization that combines each of ideas learned from the reading. This concept-based learning activity is helpful in that it allows students to gain a deeper understanding of multiple topics by supporting their responses with textual evidence in the form of quotes from their reading (Erickson et al., 137).

For example, a conceptual focus could be character development. These three example texts all include characters that are explained to the reader through dialogue, their behavior, and the way the author describes them:

• Edward the Edmu by Sheena Knowles
• Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partidge by Mem Fox
• Wombat Stew by Pamela Lofts

3 Factual questions that can be asked within this character developmental focus are:

1. What do you know about the main character from the author’s description?
2. What do you know about the main character from the dialogue?
3. What do you know about the main character from his/her actions?

When presenting this assignment to students, each of the 3 boxes that are connected to each question can hold textual support from each of the 3 books. These example texts are each very different in their own ways. The first book explains a story of how an emu comes to accept himself as he explores life as multiple other animals. The second text is about a boy and his relationship to an elderly woman who has lost her memory, and the third is about a group of friends that try to save a wombat from being eaten by making his predator some stew. All unique in their own ways, this makes finding connections and similarities across multiple texts easier for students to see. When allowing students to include their support from each text, some examples of how the author describes these characters from their description could be:

• “Edward was easily adventurous and brave to join the other animals” (Text 1)
• Wilfred was caring” (Text 2)”
• “Dingo was easily fooled” (Text 3)

Finally at the end of the activity, an example of a conceptual question could be: How do author’s deepen a reader’s understanding of characters? Students can then come up with conclusions about how the author’s methods of writing descriptions and dialogues within each story allows the reader to better get a sense of what a character is like. Having students sum up their ideas from the activity in their final generalization statement encourages students to grasp concept-based ideas and similarities from multiple texts. Doing so makes this a unique learning tactic to use within the classroom.

Lesson Plan (How to Perform Book Talk):

1. Pass out a sheet to each student with 3 factual questions to answer as well as a conceptual question to answer at the end of the activity
2. Require each student to support their responses with 3 quotes (1 from each text) per factual question
3. Allow students to gather their understandings in 1 final statement about what they learned that answers said conceptual question

For this method I sought out to look for other examples of similar graphic organizers like the example in the book, and found one that seemed fairly close in design on pinterest here called a ‘persuasion map’ where students would be given 1 idea and would need to support their 3 reasons with 3 additional facts or examples. While not in this particular example, when scrolling I also found other examples that used the same idea of requiring students to sum their ideas up in 1 final conclusion.