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Video transcript

Presenter intro: Chloe Wardle

Everything that we decided to include in a lesson should help pupils to achieve clear learning goals. But it can often feel like there is a large amount of content to cover. Teachers need to identify the different types of knowledge that a lesson includes, and know why they are there. How do different bits help to develop pupil understanding? Identifying different types of knowledge helps teachers to understand the best routes through the content and what areas they might prioritise.

Presenter main

When you look at a lesson, there is often a daunting amount of content to teach. It would be overwhelming to present pupils with a mass of content, but we can’t simply cut out all the detail either. Instead teachers need to create a meaningful pathway that guides pupils towards clear learning goals. Put another way, we want to help pupils to construct coherent mental models from the content that we teach them.

A mental model is what we know about something. It is a structured body of knowledge and skills that helps us to make sense of things. We use mental models to understand and navigate the world around us. When we enter a restaurant, our mental model of what a restaurant is and what people do within a restaurant guides our actions. Our mental model of a restaurant is likely to include the fact that there will be menus to choose from. So we might look for a menu when we sit down. When we read a text that mentions the word dinosaur, we draw on our mental model of what a dinosaur is to make meaning from the words. We know that dinosaurs are extinct and could be ferocious, and this will help us to make sense of the text. The more we know about the world and the better that knowledge is secured and organised, the more we can know and do. We want to help pupils to build mental models and retain them in the long term. Examining your own mental model of the content, what you know about it, will help with this process.

To identify the different types of knowledge within a lesson and the role that they play in forming pupils’ mental models, it can be helpful to do a sorting exercise, in which teachers identify the most important content that they want pupils to remember, and the additional content that will be necessary for this. They can identify the critical content and supporting materials such as the best examples, analogies, stories, and details to frame it and make it stick.

Critical content is what you hope your pupils will remember in one year, three years or even more. The concept of solitude, the concept of evaporation. Supporting material enables pupils to access this critical content. But we may be willing to accept pupils forgetting some of it. Individual examples of solitude, that the puddles dried up in the playground before children had a chance to jump in them. Supporting material includes analogies, stories, and illustrations. There are different ways of presenting material and teachers need to think carefully about this choice. Examples give your understanding substance. Critical content will sit at the heart of our pupils’ mental models, and lots of other content will relate to it. We want our pupils to keep hold of it, and apply it in the future.

Both critical and supporting content are important. Supporting material may provide the concrete examples that make sense of an abstract concept to recall the prior knowledge that will help pupils to understand and remember something new. Supporting material can provide pupils with the rich breadth of knowledge that the broad and balanced curriculum should offer, and increased complexity. For example, when teaching the First and Second World Wars, including the contribution of BAME soldiers helps to expand pupils’ understanding of the personal sacrifices made. Supporting materials might also bring the lessons to life and help pupils to pay attention. For example, a geography teacher may want pupils to understand the concept of biome. To do that they might teach pupils about some of the different plants and animals that live in a particular biome, perhaps the Amazon rainforest. Over time pupils are likely to remember the meaning of biome, but forget some of the details specific to the Amazon rainforest. That pupils retain the understanding of biome is important but that doesn’t make the details redundant.

When teachers have a good understanding of the critical content and supporting material in a lesson, and how they are connected, they can sequence learning in a coherent way. They can identify prior knowledge that links to the critical material, and ensure that the lesson builds on that. They will know when to introduce supporting material and when to move on from it, and which content they will need to revisit in order to strengthen it. They can take their pupils on a better learning journey.

Presenter exemplification framing

In the next model, you will hear part of a coaching conversation. The focus of the conversation is to identify the different types of knowledge that one particular lesson covers, and the order in which they should come. As you watch pay particular attention to how they do the following:

• Identify essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject
• Sequence lessons so that pupils secure foundational knowledge before encountering more complex content

Exemplification: Sarah Cottingham and Paula Delaney

COACH (SARAH COTTINGHAM): So our goal for this coaching session is to understand what content you’re teaching in the lesson, and why that each piece of content is there. So we want to know the most critical content and what the role of the supporting material is playing in their learning. Remind me what the scheme of work is? What is the overall learning goal of the lesson? And how is the lesson connected to the goal in the scheme of work?

 ECT (PAULA DELANEY): So this is a year 3 scheme of work about the rainforests. And the learning goal for this lesson is to understand some of the differences between their lives and the lives of tribal families. And so far pupils have a good understanding of what a rainforest is and the vast amount of species and plants that the rainforest supports. But in this lesson, they will be learning more about the people that the rainforest supports. Later on pupils will learn what deforestation is. So a key goal of this scheme of work is understanding the detrimental effect of deforestation. In this lesson, pupils need to acquire an understanding of how vital the rainforest is to the people that live there, so they can recognise how bad deforestation is for the people that rely on it.

COACH: Great. I know that you’ve looked at the suggested lesson resources to identify what pupils are learning. Can you show me the list of knowledge and skills that you’ve identified?

 ECT: Yep, here’s the list.

• To know that most children in the UK tend to live with their parents
• To know that in the Amazon rainforest children live with their extended family in tribes
• To know that children in the UK have free access to healthcare via the NHS
• To know that tribal families in the Amazon rainforest have limited access to healthcare clinics or hospitals but instead rely on local plants and remedies
• To know that many of the medicines we use in the UK come from plants which grow in the Amazon rainforest
• To know that children in the UK must now be in education or training until at least the age of 16. In England the age is 18
• To know that education in the Amazon rainforest can take many different forms as communities can be quite small and remote: some pupils may have lessons which are delivered remotely while others attend small schools where there are pupils of different ages taught by the same teacher
• To know that in the UK much of the food we eat is bought from shops and supermarkets
• To know that in the Amazon rainforest communities tend to work together to grow and produce their own food locally or hunt for it using tools they have developed specifically for this purpose COACH: Great. So now I want you to think about which of the content you would describe as critical. So by critical, I mean, it’s the content that you want your pupils to remember in the long term. Perhaps because there’s lots of other ideas that relate to it, or because it’s critical to their understanding of other concepts in the scheme of work like deforestation or sustainability.

ECT: Okay. Sure. I think that this is the content that I would describe as critical.

COACH: Let’s apply a couple of questions to these statements, to test out whether they really are critical content. Let’s take this statement first. Why is it important that pupils know and remember this?

ECT: So food is locally sourced by Amazon rainforest communities from the forest and river around them. They have developed a specific tools and practices for hunting local game, and children learn about different plants that are edible as part of their education. So if our pupils know this it will help them to recognise that one of the reasons why deforestation is so devastating because it deprives communities in the Amazon rainforest of that vital food source.

COACH: Great. Is there any material that you think is supporting? So by supporting, I mean it helps to understand this core content but we might not require pupils to remember it in the long term.

ECT: Yeah, remembering the specific types of food that people in the Amazon rainforest eat.

COACH: Okay. So why is this material in the lesson?

ECT: So introducing them to different food types gives them a concrete example, which will help them to see how much communities in the Amazon rely on local food production. I wouldn’t expect them to remember the precise foods consumed in the Amazon, but I do want them to remember it, that they are reliant on local foods.

COACH: I agree. And looking back at your original list, I would suggest that the following content could also be described as supporting material. It serves that important purpose in the lesson, but we’re willing to accept that pupils may forget some of it. Let’s have a look. So knowing what school is like for children in the Amazon rainforest will be really interesting to our pupils. And it’s another example of something concrete that will help them relate to children in the Amazon, but it’s okay if pupils lose this detail, once it’s served its purpose in the lesson. In terms of sequencing, which items on your list do you think it makes sense to start with first?

ECT: I think it would be good to start by looking at the different food sources in the rainforest. This gives pupils an opportunity to recall what they know about the different plant and animal species in there. This is something we explored in previous lessons. It also helps them to visualize what rainforest are like. And they will need to do this before they can think about the lives of the people who live in the rainforests.

COACH: What would pupils need to learn next?

Presenter exemplification analysis

There were a couple of key ideas to highlight from this conversation. First, both the coach and the early career teacher were clear about what they wanted their pupils to remember from the lesson. From a longer list of knowledge, they identified the critical content. Once they had identified what knowledge pupils needed to learn, they discussed how to sequence it. They identified which knowledge pupils needed to secure first. In this case, knowledge of the different plants and animal species found in the Amazon rainforest.

This is only a snapshot of a longer coaching conversation, so it cannot show the full detail of everything discussed. However, even from this short example, it is clear that the early career teacher was thinking deeply about what pupils were learning in the lesson, what purpose each piece of content served and the best order in which to teach it. This will enable the early career teacher to plot a clear path through the large amount of content, ensuring that the pupils secure and revisit the big ideas of a subject over time.

Presenter key ideas

In this video, we have explored how to identify different types of knowledge in a lesson, and how to sequence them. Before we finish, read over the key ideas that we have covered. Which ones do you feel that the example illustrated the best?

• Identifying essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject and providing opportunity for all pupils to learn and master these critical components.
• Sequencing lessons so that pupils secure foundational knowledge before encountering more complex content.
• Revisiting the big ideas of the subject over time and teaching key concepts through a range of examples.

Presenter summary

Thinking hard about what you are teaching is a vital part of a teacher’s role. Examining different types of knowledge in a lesson and how it is connected helps teachers to know what they’re teaching and why. They can then use this knowledge to make decisions in the classroom that can help motivate pupils in their learning and develop sophisticated mental models of their subject.