Activity 1: Skills and Best Practices

Concept Formation

Using a series of questions can be useful in defining a concept. For example, the following questions could be adapted to teach the concepts of weather and climate:

• What places of the world uniquely illustrate the concept of climate?
• What are the characteristics of “climate”?
• How is climate alike and different from “weather”?

More information is available at: www.ehhs.cmich.edu.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers come in all shapes and forms and can be used for variety of purposes.

Find your favorite graphic organizer and detailed information about it at the following site: http://www.graphic.org/goindex.html.

Advanced Organizers

Advance organizers are a special form of graphic organizers. They do include such strategies as charts, diagrams, and concept maps usually labeled as “graphic organizers”. However, they may also include oral presentations and pictures containing context clues. What is the difference?

Advance organizers are used for a specific person – they connect new information to prior knowledge. We learn new things by relating them to concepts and skills that we are already familiar with. Specifically, they:

• Provide a clued and link our minds to the previous knowledge
• Help to embed new knowledge into long term memory
• Relate the new information to the old knowledge