Solidifying Core Concepts With Examples and Non-Examples

In Sarah Yuska’s sixth-grade science class at Monocacy Middle School in Frederick, Maryland, students are just finishing up learning about body systems—respiratory, circulatory, skeletal, and so on. Next, they’ll tackle how the systems work together in an organism. But before moving on, Yuska wants to be sure her students have a solid understanding of each individual system. Enter examples and non-examples, a research-backed approach that helps students refine their own mental models of concepts—and helps teachers identify any misunderstandings in key foundational ideas.

According to Learning Science Partners cofounder Jim Heal, “If you have faulty understanding at the outset, it’s just going to compound over time. And so with an example and a non-example, you are inviting students to be able to say, ‘I know what this idea is because I can compare it to what it isn’t.’”

In the classroom, Yuska distributes posters, each with four headings: Respiratory, Circulatory, Both, and None. She also passes out cards containing pictures of different cells, organs, and people doing activities that would connect to those systems.

The sorting begins. Working in pairs, students have to determine what category each card belongs in, and the discussion among students is powerful. “I was happy to see they were using their resources,” says Yuska. “I noticed the children were really trying to work out where the cards belonged and why they belong there. And then I heard some nice disagreements.”

While walking around the room observing, Yuska is able to see where students may have some misunderstandings, and she ends class by using the overhead projector and sorting the cards as a whole class, so everyone can not only see where each card belongs but also hear the reasoning behind the categorization.

The activity can be applied to almost any topic that lends itself to a classification exercise—from geometric shapes to branches of government to literary devices. Having strong, clear examples and non-examples chosen ahead of time—and course-correcting along the way—is critical to the success of the activity. For teachers trying it out, Deans for Impact has published a PDF called “Using Examples and Non-Examples” that describes how to do the activity, shares why it works, and lists common pitfalls to avoid.

Why is identifying examples and non-examples a strong way to solidify core content? Knowledge is organized in long-term memory as mental models called schema, and this type of activity helps create accurate and nuanced schema—which is incredibly important for students who must draw upon those concepts for future learning.

This video is part of our How Learning Happens series, which explores teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development.