Skip to main content
Beta
This is a new service – contact continuing-professional-development@digital.education.gov.uk with any feedback
  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 2: Second half-term: revisiting the importance of subject and curriculum knowledge
    • Spring week 2

    Mentor materials

    Setting the scene, and the core concepts and principles of the subject

    Intended outcomes

    The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:

    Learn how to support pupils to build increasingly complex mental models, by:

    • Discussing curriculum design with experienced colleagues and balancing exposition, repetition, practice of critical skills and knowledge
    • Revisiting the big ideas of the subject over time and teaching key concepts through a range of examples
    • Drawing explicit links between new content and the core concepts and principles in the subject.

    Activities

    Welcome to module 10 (25 minutes)

    Suggested dialogue for mentors:

    Welcome to module 10 called ‘Revisiting the importance of subject and curriculum knowledge’. As you know, this module builds on your learning from Year 1.

    Guidance to mentors:

    The ECT should have read the ‘Thinking about your practice’ section of the self-directed study materials ahead of the topic. The mentor should also read this to familiarise themselves with the content. In this portion of the mentor topic, the mentor will be asking questions to check the ECT’s understanding of what they have read.

    Suggested dialogue for mentors:

    You completed Activity 10.2 of the self-directed study materials: ‘Thinking about your practice’ in relation to subject and curriculum knowledge ahead of this topic. Let’s discuss your response to the questions to check your understanding of that material.

    Why is it important to discuss curriculum design with colleagues?

    • Your colleagues have valuable experience and expertise that you can learn from.
    • By asking for help and guidance from colleagues, you increase the chances of producing high-quality lessons sooner.
    • Your colleagues will be able to point you towards excellent existing resources: there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every lesson.

    What are some of the ways teachers can support each other with curriculum design?

    • Be involved in curriculum meetings within your department.
    • Ask questions (examples documented in the self-directed study materials).
    • Look at the curriculum for your subject and plan out questions that will help you better understand it (examples documented in the self-directed study materials).
    • Engage with other subject specialists to help you make links.
    • Ask how they go about the design process (examples documented in the self-directed study materials).
    • Discuss with teachers of your subject and other subjects how they balance exposition, repetition and practice of critical skills and knowledge (examples documented in the self-directed study materials).
    • Discuss with a variety of colleagues to get examples of how other teachers approach this.

    Why should the big ideas be revisited over time?

    • The big ideas are the key ideas in a subject: the ones that provide the foundation upon which everything else builds.
    • It is necessary to direct pupils to the knowledge and skills needed in a particular subject area as this will help to structure the acquisition of new learning.
    • Mastering the big ideas can deepen understanding and knowledge.

    Why should you teach concepts using a range of examples?

    • Concrete examples make abstract concepts more tangible.
    • Concrete examples help pupils make sense of generalised statements/definitions.
    • Non-examples help pupils understand the boundary of the concept.
    • A wide range of examples helps pupils understand the breadth of the domain.

    How will you know if you have used a sufficient number of examples?

    • Testing pupils’ understanding will help you work out if you have given enough examples – after a few examples, ask the students to apply their understanding. If they cannot, then you will need to provide more examples.
    • Asking pupils more complex questions will test how well they have grasped the abstract concept.

    What are some of the different ways teachers can make explicit links between new content and the core concepts and principles in the subject?

    1. Begin with what pupils already know.
    2. Provide a clear explanation.
    3. Use examples to support understanding.
    4. Take steps to address common misconceptions.
    5. Plan opportunities for multiple exposures.

    Drawing explicit links between new content and the core concepts and principles of the subject (25 minutes)

    Guidance to mentors:

    This is closely related to the ideas already discussed in this topic, in particular, linking learning to the big ideas of the subject. In module 4, mentors and ECTs did a mapping exercise of the essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of a subject which the ECT teaches. Remind the ECT of this task.

    • Concepts: the core ideas pupils need to learn. These are abstract ideas as opposed to facts, e.g. power and democracy.
    • Principles: the underlying foundations of the subject, e.g. the past can be interpreted in different ways.

    Pose the question: What different ways have you presented new content for the first time? If the ECT is struggling, prompt for specific examples: “When you introduced X, what exactly did pupils see/hear/read as their first introduction to the content?”

    Pose the question: What steps do you take to help connect new ideas to existing knowledge? The ECT may find answering these questions challenging as it might feel like something that they ‘just do’. Explain to the ECT that it is essential to plan intentionally for how new concepts will be introduced and to consider in planning what the links are to both existing knowledge and the core concepts/principles of the subject. Share one of the following examples with the ECT – the concept it is being linked to (genre in secondary and creative writing in primary) is one of the big ideas of the topic. The mentor could adapt this for their own area or phase.

    Example 1:

    A Year 4 class is studying myths and legends. They have previously studied the key components of creative story writing, including the structure of a story with a start, middle, cliff-hanger and resolution and the importance of a protagonist. Understanding the underlying structure of story writing helps pupils to understand heros in myths and legends as well as develop their schema.

    Example 2:

    A Year 9 English class is studying Romeo and Juliet. They have explored the concept of genre previously but are unfamiliar with the new concept of the tragic genre. This also links to form, imagery, language patterns and plot. Understanding the key concept will allow pupils to see how this fits into the bigger picture of the subject and supports the development of schema.

    A concept should be introduced by:

    • Linking it to prior knowledge and understanding
    • Placing it within the principles of the subject
    • Linking it to core concepts
    • Rooting it to concrete examples.

    Together, look at the lesson that the ECT is planning to teach soon. Pose the following questions:

    1. What new concepts are being taught in this lesson?
    2. In what ways does this new concept link to the core concepts and principles of the subject?
    3. How do you plan to make the links explicit between this new concept and the core concepts and principles of the subject?

    Planning for action

    The ECT is going to discuss curriculum design with a colleague. Help the ECT plan for this conversation by writing a list of questions.

    Before beginning:

    • Decide what will the purpose of the conversation be? What does the ECT hope to gain? (This could be furthering their understanding of the planning process, exploring how big ideas are planned in or anything else that will support their practice)
    • Identify who it will be most useful to speak to in order to achieve this (subject lead, curriculum lead, same subject or different subject).
    • How will this support the ECT’s practice?

    Plan out three to five questions the ECT will ask their colleague. The questions from earlier in this topic could be used to help. Agree a time to observe the ECT. It would work well to suggest the lesson that has been discussed in this topic.

    The focus of the observation will be:

    • The extent to which the ECT is able to demonstrate that they are revisiting the big ideas of the subject
    • The range of examples the ECT is using to exemplify concepts
    • The extent to which the ECT is drawing explicit links between new content and the core concepts and principles of the subject.