‘Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’

- Immanuel Kant

If we are looking to refine our thinking and planning in the curriculum, it is important to pay special attention to the big ideas. There are two main reasons why the identification and exploration of concepts are important: the first is that they bring coherence to our curricular thinking and planning. And the second is that that they make learning more efficient for our pupils.

We need our curriculum plans to be coherent, they need to have a rationale, otherwise they are just random things we expect pupils to learn. One of the most efficient ways to secure coherence is to identify the concepts. This is because they provide the threads of a journey through the content matter. They signpost the underlying structures. They are laden with meaning. They are very efficient. And yet they are also able to expand. Concepts act as holding baskets for lots of information. If I 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. They 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. Paying attention to concepts means that we are developing the intellectual architecture for meaning and for strengthening memory over time.

The second reason why concepts are important is the effect that they have on learning. Identifying the big ideas helps pupils to make sense of what they are being taught. Instead of random lists of stuff to be learnt, the concept acts as 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. As we identify concepts, and then start building new information relating to those concepts we are providing a rich picture for pupils. Concepts need to be the driver for learning. Given that we cannot teach everything, Daniel Willingham argues that pupils should learn the concepts that come up again and again - ‘the unifying ideas of each discipline.’

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 an importance 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. There is no need to use them all, but they should all be considered, so that we are very intentional about the ones that we wish to develop. We are in the process of curricular decision making when we do this work.

The second place we might go is to the texts we have selected. Texts with a narrative element are a very efficient way of conveying information to our pupils. The written word in a high quality text is more formal and contains more complex vocabulary than in everyday talk. And using high quality texts is how we power up our pupils’ learning. And there are often big ideas within the texts and so we identify these 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, for example 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 - the word isosceles comes from two Greek words. Now 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 isos 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 up to go deeper in their understanding.

Or we might take the word hubris - the idea that sometimes human beings, through vanity and ambition overreach themselves and come tumbling down. This is a recognisable human trait - boastful words and behaviour often come back to bite us. And when we go into the root of the word hubris and find out that within Greek tragedy it means excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis, then our learning is deeper. Now hubris, is an important thread in literature and we might decide that we want to use this as a ‘thread’ throughout the curriculum. Other big ideas in English are logos, ethos and pathos and through unpacking these, we provide real resonance for both current and later learning. We are setting up the subliminal signposts for these characteristics and big ideas to be spotted and dwelt upon in future work.