Concentric Circles – Getting Students to Think Bigger (and Smaller!)
Concentric Circles is a differentiation technique which moves students up and down the ladder of abstraction, applying a single idea in multiple contexts.
Example:
In this example, my students are applying the big idea “🏛️ Problems lead to new rules. Those rules lead to new problems.” (yes, it’s a favorite of mine) to three contexts of increasing “size”: home, school, and our city.
You could add to or change those around, of course. How does the big idea apply to a country? To an apartment complex? To Disneyland? The key is how students are thinking! They’re working with one idea across various contexts.
The big problem? My students hated writing in those circles and I hated reading their writing in those circles. Solution? We’d drop the circle organizer just write boring old square paragraphs in a list!
- Home
- School
- City