Concept Development Comes Before Skill Development
Learn how to build what students know
Have you ever reached the end of your modelled instruction and realised your students were following the steps... but didn’t actually understand what they were doing?
They could copy your process.
They could answer a few questions while you were guiding them.
But as soon as the task changed, everything seemed to fall apart.
Often, it isn’t because the skill was taught poorly.
It’s because the concept wasn’t established first.
Concept development and skill development are two different parts of an explicit lesson, yet they’re often treated as though they’re the same thing.
Concept development is about building understanding.
It’s where we introduce the academic vocabulary, define key terms and help students develop the mental models they’ll need for the new learning.
Skill development comes afterwards.
That’s where we explicitly teach students how to apply that understanding.
Think about teaching equivalent fractions.
Before students can find a common denominator, they first need to understand what a denominator actually is.
Or before students identify adjectives in a sentence, they need to understand what an adjective is.
Without that conceptual understanding, students are often relying on memorising a process rather than understanding why they’re doing it.
Concept development provides the foundation.
Skill development builds on that foundation.
When we separate the two, our explanations become clearer, our modelling becomes more purposeful, and students are far more likely to transfer their learning beyond the lesson in front of them.
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