Sequencing
3 steps and 6 resources to help learning actually stick
Welcome to the Curriculum Thinkers newsletter where we share research and resources from the We Are In Beta community to help you get the best outcomes for your students.
This is a guest post by Curriculum expert and former Vice Principal, Aidan Severs. If you’d like to write for us, head to the bottom of this post.
It probably goes without saying that our pupils need to learn things in the correct order. You have to be able to walk before you can run and a building needs its foundations - but enough with the metaphors. Well, OK, indulge me in one more: we don’t just throw students in at the deep end and teach them A-level content in Year 7.
Cognitive science tells us that new learning is built upon relevant prior knowledge, and that making those connections helps us to store the new information in networks of knowledge in our brains. So, if we want our pupils to learn things, we have to get things in the right order for them.
One way to do that is by working backwards from defined end points, it makes sense that we might think so, they need to know X, Y and Z in year 11, so in year 10 they’ll need to be taught U,V and W, and in year 9 they will need R, S, T - I think you get the picture, and are probably thinking about what X, Y and Z is in your own subject.
Yes, it makes sense, but it’s not always easy to do. Getting together with the other teachers in your department to discuss what should be taught and when (a great thing to do, by the way) could lead to almost endless deliberations. Should students study medieval society before medieval warfare? Should the concept of energy be taught before or after work on forces, electricity and particles? Should religious beliefs be taught before or after religious lifestyles?
And sometimes there isn’t a definitive right answer, so how can you go about making those sequencing decisions?
…before I reveal three steps that help with sequencing decisions, a quick public service announcement…
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3 steps to sequencing curriculum so that learning sticks
1. Identifying Core Knowledge and How It Connects
Gaige Pearson, a curriculum head at Shire Oak Academy, has a great way of doing this. When working on his curriculum, he first thought beyond the idea of sequencing, and instead focused on the more underpinning idea of connected knowledge: ‘we really need to carefully select the knowledge most likely to support and connect to new learning. This requires us to consider how one episode of teaching requires prior knowledge to not only reinforce the long-term memory but also access new learning without creating cognitive overload.’ Thinking in terms of a ‘synoptic curriculum’ - that is a curriculum where items of knowledge and units of work are connected - has provided the foundation for sequencing knowledge at Shire Oak Academy.
To do this, Gaige thought carefully about what would be considered as core knowledge: ‘core knowledge is information that you want your students to remember and to stick in their long-term memory.’ Before you can get things in the right order, you have to know what the things are: sometimes this can feel like a messy process but it’s essential to identify and gather the building blocks of content before you start to build a curriculum.
However, we all know that no DIY job is completed without several trips to B&Q as you realise along the way that you need more materials and tools. Curriculum-making is the same: as you start to sequence, you’ll realise there are pieces of content that need to be brought in at an earlier point to ensure that the foundations are in place.
2. Communicating Sequences To Teachers
Planning and sequencing the curriculum clearly isn’t enough. It must also be communicated well. None of us are strangers to curriculum plans, schemes of learning, unit overviews and so on. But these vary wildly in quality - take it from me, I’ve seen some that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
So what makes a medium term plan that actually communicates all that careful curriculum thinking and design? How can a document on a computer screen actually ensure that all pupils can access the curriculum in order to gain knowledge and skills incrementally to reach its stated aims? Well, Gaige has an answer to that question: you explicitly provide all the necessary information in your medium term plans.
Not only do his plans include clearly defined end points, they also provide information about how the unit links to previous and future work. Here we see a section of the medium plan dedicated to explaining in detail exactly where this comes in the sequence and how it builds on previously taught content and how it provides a foundation for content that is yet to be taught:
And there’s more: key prior knowledge and vocabulary are also identified. On Gaige’s medium term planning document we see a written explanation of content that students should already know, highlighting specifically content that is relevant to the unit of work (rather than just anything and everything they have previously been taught). The magic of the digital age is that in such documentation links to other documents can be included - in this case, it’s the vocabulary list of words that pupils have learned to use in a prior unit.
And then, as if all the above wasn’t enough, Gaige’s teaching team are provided with a week-by-week overview of learning throughout the school year so they can really see how everything is sequenced. Although this is an overview document with 5 lessons worth of content in each row, it can still be seen at this overarching level that the content of lessons 1 to 5 provide a foundation for the next part of the sequence in lessons 6 to 11. Look a little closer and you’ll also see really useful information for teachers about the common misconceptions that might arise. This points teachers towards the careful teaching of particular content which, if not learned, would almost certainly create issues later on in the sequence: remember, when pupils don’t have the necessary foundational knowledge, they will struggle to learn the next pieces of content in the sequence.
But is this just a lot of hard work for not much impact? Well, Shire Oak report improved grades and students who are now developing an analytical mindset at an earlier stage and who now naturally make links between topics.
When you think about it, though, teachers aren’t the only ones you might want to communicate this curriculum sequencing to. What would happen if that information was made accessible to pupils?
Would someone else find this useful?
3. Communicating Sequences To Pupils
Let’s hop over to another colleague’s school now. Fiona Sheriff at Kingsthorpe College has developed a brilliant template in which curriculum coherence is made obvious, showing how the unit in question links to prior and future learning.
And let’s not forget about those important defined end points - they’re there too in Fiona’s pupil-facing ‘What are we studying this term?’ handout. Useful, because when you look closely, you can see the sequencing of the curriculum. Regardless of what subject you teach, you’ll recognise that being able to describe what climate change is comes as a crucial precursor to describing the impacts of it on Pakistan.
In the same document, pupils are also provided with a straightforward learning map where key concepts are broken down clearly and an outline of exactly how they will be assessed so there are no surprises later.
And all this communication of careful curriculum sequencing has had a positive impact: Kingsthorpe College report that pupils who understand core concepts at KS3 get better outcomes at KS4 and KS5, that they have a better understanding of key terminology and processes and can apply these and that students’ synoptic work is much stronger as they are able to make links between different areas of the curriculum.
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Your subject: sequencing so new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before
By defining your end points, and then working backwards to decipher which pieces of core knowledge must be taught in order for students to reach those goals, you will be in a great position to begin to sequence knowledge and skills in your subject.
Get your colleagues together to do this task: working collectively will allow you to draw from a greater amount of teaching experience. Ask these questions, with a particular single end point in mind:
What are all the things that pupils must know/be able to do in order to eventually know/be able to do this?
When we taught towards that end point previously, what went well with regards to the order we taught things in?
When we taught towards that end point previously, what struggles did pupils have, and to what extent was that down to incorrect sequencing and gaps in knowledge?
If I didn’t know anything about this subject, what would I need to know first? What next? What after that?
Are there any chunks of knowledge that we’ve missed out of our sequence?
And then repeat this with each defined end point. As you work, you will recognise how interconnected things need to be. This might mean you have to go back to a sequence you’ve already decided on in order to tweak it. In many subjects one piece of core knowledge will be foundational for several of the end points: it’s crucial then to make sure that it is taught early enough to provide this foundation.
And that’s without even mentioning how important cross-curricular links are and how interconnected different subjects can be. Fear not, we’ll explore this in more detail next time when we look at mapping curriculum coverage so that each lesson, regardless of subject or year group, forms part of a wider pattern of learning.
All curriculum and teaching techniques in this series
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Further reading and resources around curriculum, sequencing and making learning stick
Curriculum Action Steps: codifying your curriculum development journey
Curriculum policies: what do they look like across 45 high-performing schools?
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