Curriculum

Threshold Concepts

Teacher’s plan for children’s learning through Threshold Concepts for long term memory.

These are the big ideas that shape students' thinking within each subject.

The threshold concepts are not designed to be 'achieved'. They are designed to be advanced throughout the primary years. This reflects the nature of growing depth and mastery. The word 'achieved' is not compatible with an ongoing, growing understanding of something.

They are consistent from years 1-6 and contain 78 objectives.

They are from the aims and purpose of study section in the National Curriculum
They are few in number so they are repeatable
They are common to all year groups so they can be tracked
They are worthy of mention on a pupil’s school report
They become both the planning and assessment foci.

Each concept has progression indicators called Milestones which outlines the general procedural and semantic knowledge required to understand the concepts.

The Threshold Concepts are further broken down into progress indicators called milestones, which are age appropriate for learning and assessment and outline the procedural and semantic knowledge required to understand the concepts.

Curriculum structure

Having consistent learning objectives allows the children to see their learning journey as they progress through the school. For example, they will work on ‘to spell correctly’ in Year 1 but it will look very different when they are working on it during year 6.

These Threshold Concepts are shared with the children and they have pictorial representations so that all children can recognise what they are learning at all stages of development.

Please click on the link to see the Threshold Concepts in each subject.