Facts, Concepts and Generalizations

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Learning Objectives for today’s Lesson:

Students (You! ) will be able to:• Differentiate between a fact, concept and

generalization.• Explain the importance of generalizations.• Identify strategies for teaching concepts and

generalizations.

This relates to our Course Objective of:• Explain and implement the role of inquiry,

concepts and generalizations in Social Studies.

Important Idea to remember…

• Students gain factual knowledge, build concepts and form generalizations all the time (at home, on the playground, in front of the tv)

• In class, we want to create experiences for students to gain factual knowledge, build concepts and form generalizations that help them understand Social Studies content (life!) better.

Facts

• Do not need to be “academic” sounding.

• Do not need to be detailed.

• Examples of Facts:– My family has four

people in it.– Florida has a warmer

winter than Canada.

Concepts

• Ideas• Abstract• Construct Meaning• Examples:

– Family– Climate– Nation– Island– War

Activity• Pick an age group and discuss what “factual” knowledge

you would expect your students to have based on their prior experience.

• Your group will have one of the following concepts:– Family– Community– Money– Trade– War– Internet– Religion– Government– Law

Generalization

• Relationships among 2 or more concepts.• These can be big understandings/ideas for a

unit.• Examples:

– Families vary in structure, number and experience.– Climate varies by location.– War has negative effects for the environment and

citizens of a region.– Creating, using and understanding maps helps us

understand our world and its people.

Generalizations: Customers need to make choices at stores based on the amount of money they have and the

cost of items.

Concepts: Cost, Product, Sales,

Store, Money

Facts: Cars 2 Movie cost $15.00.

Milk cost 3.90. Baby Formula cost $24.00. Mom has 30.00. Mom says she doesn’t have enough money for the movie I want.

Activity

• Playground• Restaurant• Riding in Car• Playing Baseball• Hallway at School• Going to the Airport• Going to the Library• Watching a professional hockey game.

Generalizations: Creating,

understanding and using maps can help us learn about the world and its people.

Concepts: Map, Location, Scale,

Legend/Key, Data, Index, Grid, Source, Title, Orientation/Direction

Facts: 39*North and 92*W are the

latitude and longitude coordinates of my hometown. Grids can be used to find a place

on a map and while travellling. Geographic Information systems store data. Maps are

more attractive to me when they are in color. Legends tell what the symbols mean on a

map.

Activity

• Create a Facts, Concepts, Generalizations triangle to include some of your ideas for your thematic unit.

• Consider and list on the side:– Possible Misconceptions– Possible Inaccurate Generalization

Experiences in the classroom.

• Like Inquiry, creating experiences where students gain factual knowledge, construct concepts and form generalizations can take many forms.– Inquiry based activities– Guided Discovery (what we’ll be doing today)– Field Trips– Books– Summative Projects

Africa Posters Activity

• “Country Projects”

• “Concept Maps”

• Developed Countries

• Examples and Non Examples

• Gather Data

• Concept Map

Matching Quiz

• Based on readings and lecture.