Tristan Stockford

9/26/2016
Math Journal Entry: of The Five Components
Decontextualization: This component of Concept-Rich Instruction to me seems to mean
that students need to be exposed to a wide variety of uses, contexts, and scenarios in which a
concept might appear in order to then generate the concept on their own. This is not new to me,
and the only idea about it that scares me as being necessary is that in order to expose students
to multiple contexts for every concept, it would obviously take up a lot of time in class. As a
teacher time is simply not a luxury we have in the classroom as more and more curriculum gets
added every year. This idea clearly fits in well with the other components of Concept-Rich
Instruction, as with the first Component (Practice) the two go hand-in-hand. It stands to reason
that if you were to expose your students to lots of practice that you may as well vary the ways in
which the students practice the concept. The third component should come fairly naturally after
having been given adequate time and practice and exposure to a concept, that is to say that it
should be easy for students to put into words a concept after having discovered and learned a
concept on their own. To put this new concept back into context, component four then describes
how students will be able to connect this concept with their experiences. Lastly, after having a
definition in words of what a concept is and how it works, students may need guidance but
should still be able to make connections from this newly acquired concept to past and (perhaps)
future concepts as well, as described in component five.