Concepts and Facts: What Is Their Relationship?

In a kindergarten classroom, arguably the most important work of the students is to begin to read. Of course, reading fluency begins in such small bites that it doesn't look or sound fluid for many students, but the baselines are established. Jerome Bruner's idea, that a child should be equipped with facts and prepared to connect those facts to build concept attainment, applies perfectly to the early reader. 

Bruner asks a powerful question: "How do you arrange learning in such a way that the child recognizes that when he has information he can go beyond it, that there is connectedness between the facts he has learned with other data and situations" (Bruner, 1996).

For example, when a five-year-old can identify letters and their sounds, she can then begin to see how they work together: their relationship. Although I am still in the early stages of learning to teach, it is clear that letter-sound relationships are a huge step in learning to read. If students practice games and songs that reinforce those letters and sounds, they can connect the dots with words they encounter in every other moment of their day. 

A teacher might lead an all-class chant of the alphabet's sounds in a warmup activity, and then when students continue to reader's and writer's workshops, those hard facts will assist them as they sound out letters in interesting books, start to write sentences in their own books, and even read street signs as they ride home on the bus. Concepts begin to solidify as they apply and synthesize their basic knowledge.

Bruner also emphasizes the importance of helping kids realize that they can and should be looking out for ways to connect all the things they learn in a day. This is critical thinking, and they can take ownership in it. I can picture the faces of happy, empowered little learners when they make such discoveries--such joy!

Using their newly-established language into math games, or writing their own signs for a play restaurant, or gathering friends into a group and then making a plan for a new version of tag on the playground--it's all the fruit of factual learning blooming into essential kindergarten concepts. The best part is watching it come to life. 

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References

Bruner, J. (1996). The Culture of Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Joyce, B., et. al. (2014). Models of Teaching, 9th Ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.