There’s a lot of talk about curriculum ‘sequencing’. One of the most efficient ways to sequence the curriculum is to identify the concepts or big ideas in the content we are teaching.
Concepts provide the threads of a journey through the content to be taught.
They signpost the underlying structures
They are laden with meaning
They are very efficient
They are also able to expand as new knowledge linked to the concept is encountered .
Concepts act as holding baskets for lots of information.
If we understand a concept, then new material relating to that concept becomes much stickier and is easier to make sense of. Concepts provide the schema through which meaning is made and connections are formed.
Concepts reach back into the past - where have we met this idea before?
And they stretch to the future as we consider how new information links to our previous understanding.
Instead of random lists of stuff to be learnt, a concept provides an expandable portmanteau which enables a child both to draw on prior knowledge and to include new knowledge.
The identification and explicit teaching of concepts will help pupils to make rich connections and will support them in identifying new concepts over time.
So where might we find the concepts and the big ideas? A starting point in England are the national curriculum documents.
There is a tendency to go straight to the detail of what needs to be taught. However, each of the subjects within the national curriculum has a purpose statement - namely the reason why this subject has a place within the curriculum and why pupils should be taught the subject.
It is here that we find big ideas such as democracy and civilisation in history, for example. We need to know what these are and consider how they might be included in our planning. We are in the process of curricular decision making when we do this work. I have collated the purpose statements for each of the national curriculum subjects here
The second place we can find the big ideas are in high quality texts.
Using high quality texts is how we power up pupils’ learning.
We can identify the big ideas and make sure that they thread through the lessons. This becomes deeply satisfying work both for the teacher and pupils.
We are a pattern seeking species, we search for meaning and connections and the teaching of concepts plays into these deep intellectual and psychological needs.
One of the potential barriers to the teaching of concepts, is that they are largely tier three words and often have roots in other languages, such as Latin and Greek.
While on the surface these might appear difficult, when we pay careful attention to the unpacking of these words both we and our pupils find it deeply satisfying. Spending time on the origins or the etymology of a big word pays dividends. It taps into our desire to make sense of the world and when we go back to the beginnings of the word it helps us to make links and connections. So, the very unpacking of a word, in itself helps to deepen the understanding of the concept.
To take an example from maths - we are generally pretty good at teaching pupils definitions, so if we were to ask a pupil what an isosceles triangle is, they would generally be able to tell us. But if they knew that the word isosceles comes from isos, meaning equal in Greek and sceles meaning legs, they will have a bigger mental picture of what the term isosceles means. It also means that when they meet ‘iso’ in other parts of the curriculum for example isobar and isometric, they have a clue that it has something to do with equal. When we do this work, we are supporting pupils to go deeper in their understanding.
Paying attention to concepts means that we are developing the intellectual architecture for meaning and for strengthening memory over time.
Until next time
Mary
And when you’re ready, you might find these helpful for curriculum development in your school
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The tendency to go straight to the details is a habit that's challenging to alter for our teachers, possibly due to years of this being the way curriculum has been introduced. I love how you have outlined some of the barriers to this shift.