Concept Planning And Its Practical Use At Sixth Form

Concept planning is a cycle divided into five sections. The first, communicate, tries to ascertain how much the students already know on a subject before delving into the relevant information. The second phase, apply, asks a question which would highlight any issues of controversies inherent in the concept - for instance if the concept is `love`, the question might be "could you love someone who killed a person?". The third, enquire, allows the students to discover the subject matter and research into what the concept means, what others have said about it etc. After this it is important to contextualise the concept within a religion before going on to evaluate the entire concept.

The following is a summary of my plans for research into this method of planning, if it can be utilised as a teaching method also at this level, and my findings for each class.

Concept planning in RS A2 - alongside with simply using this for planning as shown above, I used a colour-coded system on both handouts and PPTs in order to show the student which 'phase' certain activities/resources fall into.

Findings: Concept planning in lesson planning - I have found that this version of planning can be useful if the topic itself lends itself to the method. In some topics, such as 'miracle's and 'life after death' there is a clear concept that students must grasp before they can begin to look at specific theorists and evidence etc, and in these cases concept planning is a useful way to structure the topic, especially at the beginning in order to introduce the concept.

However, for some topics, such as teaching the 'cosmological argument' or any similar arguments for the existence of God, concepts are difficult to pinpoint and when found they are vital to illustrate clearly in order to clarify the topic. In these cases, as the subject is being taught to specification for the single goal of facilitating exam success, using concept planning would slow down this process with unnecessary highlighting of points not relevant to exam technique.

Concept planning in RS A2 - in this format, where planning is not only used but highlighted to the students, I found that this only worked for certain students. For those that are visual learners and respond to colour-coded resources they found the idea useful for organisational purposes but there was no significant difference in the retention of knowledge as opposed to those lessons planned using this method but without the students being aware.

Summary of how the project has impacted on your own teaching: For those topics that involve a central concept, this method of planning is useful in that it helps with structure and with covering all aspects needed by students in order to respond to exam questions appropriately, for example the 'enquire' and 'evaluate' phases directly correspond to the attainment objectives of 'knowledge and understanding' and 'evaluation'. It does not seem to matter in terms of learning and progress if students are aware of not however this can be a useful way to help students structure and organise their work if it is used consistently - something that does not appear to be achievable at this level.

As such I will be using concept planning for topics for which this is appropriate and in line within exam technique. In terms of the colour-coded resources - when concept planning is used and it would benefit the class/learners in question then this will be put into practice.