Concept-based learning

It is important that the student is exposed to the discovery of concepts and structures underlying the subject matter. They should be confronted with a problem and have to figure out where to go from there. This includes describing the situation, figuring out the given problem and formulating an adequate question that aims to solve the problem. They have to then consider different strategies, test the plausibility of each and formulate the result. In Preschool and Kindergarten, this could mean giving the students assorted buttons and jars to classify them. The student then has to describe what kind of buttons he/she sees, state different hypothesis (e.g. I don’t put the big yellow button into the jar with the small yellow buttons; that button is a different shape than all the other buttons; the orange button is of a different color than the yellow buttons) and come up with a result of categorization. Note that there is not always only one answer as we have just seen in the example. In Language Arts, it could mean to create a text interpretation from a character that is barely described in the original text. Students have to analyze the situation by understanding the roles of the main characters and describe their actions from the point of view of a bystander or a newly-created character.