Planning learning around concepts

Talking with Darren this week about planning learning around the threshold concepts which unlock further learning in Science has been interesting.  These have been comprehensively mapped here so teachers can visualise the relationship between concepts used in science learning, but also consider what students find challenging about these ideas and where alternative conceptions get in the way of full understanding.

Here's an example of what it might look like for learners K-12 learning about the living environment.

Obviously this got me thinking about this in History.  Here's a 3 minute version for teaching a sequence of lessons from a recent project:  "How significant are the Lindisfarne gospels?"  Finding the starting point for pupils becomes part of the overall plan.  Pupils arrive with prior knowledge that needs challenging, validating and piecing together with new pieces of content knowledge.

I find this useful because it illustrates opportunities for connecting ideas and where skills can be brought in too. The question of how to judge historical significance is a useful way to engage students in "thinking like a historian" and so I think exploring the three dominant models with students will be a good starting point.  You can get a brief overview of what these mean here.   Here's another version for beginning to teach power and authority to Yr 12 students studying Richard III and Henry VII.