Moving Beyond Facts and Skills to Understanding and Transfer

Why move to Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction?

Educators often wonder:

• How can I engage both the hearts and the minds of my students?

• How can I help students find personal relevance in our curriculum?

• How can I help my students develop into autonomous learners who question, problem solve, and think critically, creatively, conceptually, and reflectively?

• How can I meet the intent of academic standards without sacrificing the development of intellectual character?

• What is deep understanding, and how can I design teaching for higher order thinking and deeper understanding? 

• How can I develop the brain schema so that new knowledge can be related efficiently to prior knowledge?

• How do I create a lifelong love of learning in my students?

Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction is a three-dimensional model that utilizes facts, concepts, and skills to develop the intellect, deepen understanding, and facilitate the transfer of learning.

Quality Concept-Based units of instruction are coherent in their design- the different components support each other to ensure deep knowledge and understanding, knowledge connections and transfer, and quality performance.

Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction systematically increases thinking in our classrooms by explicitly structuring learning experiences to help students reach important transferable understandings.