How about you, which on do you choose between these 3 statement below.
- I think conceptual understanding should take priority over knowledge and skills.
- I think that students will develop conceptual understanding if they acquire the right knowledge and skills.
- I think that it is important to plan for conceptual understanding and support its development by teaching knowledge and skills.
When you focus on building conceptual understanding from students, automatically students will acquire knowledge and skills related with the concept. When we learn about concept of characteristic in a unit about living t hings, students will explore different types of animals and plants, they will be able to classify them which is the thinking skills part, they will be able to sort out which could be mathematical logical skills.
I'm fascinated with this approach and tried to apply it in my classroom, the simplest model that I can do is by displaying the key concepts and its related concept in my classroom. Beside that, I also introduce the concept chart to my students, where I put the targeted related concept in each lesson along with the inquiry questions and the key concept. See image below to see how it looked like.
On November 2014, I got a chance to lead my own workshop about Concept Based Learning in India. From that workshop I learn lot more, because of the readings and study I need to take to prepare for the workshops. I also have c chance to share it with other IB educators around Asia, which is actually a privilege.
I think the consistency is the key to everything, especially when we want to apply teaching methodology like this. I think there has been slight improvement on my teaching skills, especially with the help of concept based learning approach. My big question about inquiry based learning and how to make it happen in the classroom, part of it is answered with this approach. I will continue to implement this and improve my teaching learning strategies.