2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Concepts
• Ideas
• Abstract
• Construct Meaning
• Examples:
– Family
– Climate
– Nation
– Island
– War
6. 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
7. 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.
8.
9. 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.
10. Activity
• Playground
• Restaurant
• Riding in Car
• Playing Baseball
• Hallway at School
• Going to the Airport
• Going to the Library
• Watching a professional hockey game.
11. 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.
12. 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
13. 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
14. Africa Posters Activity
• “Country Projects”
• “Concept Maps”
• Developed Countries
• Examples and Non Examples
• Gather Data
