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The ability to design impactful Units of Inquiry to guide learning is a foundational skill for teachers implementing the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP). At the heart of each Unit of Inquiry is a well-constructed Central Idea that challenges and extends students’ prior knowledge and offers students opportunities to explore significant and relevant ideas across all subject areas.
When crafted successfully, Central Ideas invites students to inquire, construct their own meaning, and develop their ability to think conceptually. They can demonstrate their understanding and knowledge and take action related to their learning.
Over time in the PYP, students explore specified and additional concepts, and the Central Idea supports this learning to extend their critical thinking capacity. A focus on conceptual development helps students to deepen their understanding of and make connections among the subject areas.
There are several ways to start crafting a strong Central Idea. A straightforward and successful approach starts with using the Key Concepts provided by your Programme of Inquiry (POI). Typically two to three of the seven Key Concepts will be allocated to each Unit of Inquiry within the POI.
Based on the focus of the Transdisciplinary Theme for the Unit of Inquiry and the Key Concepts allocated to this unit, an area of study and the subject areas used to develop it will be identified. To develop subject matter understanding and knowledge, concepts related to the learning outcomes for the subjects in focus are established. These are the Related Concepts for the unit.
For example, in a Unit of Inquiry with the How we organize ourselves Transdisciplinary Theme with the Key Concepts of Function and Connection, there may be a focus on the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities. The area of study might be Cities, and the subject areas used to develop this might include social studies and language arts.
Looking at the learning outcomes for these two main subjects, concepts such as goods, services, and communities emerge.
Using the related concepts, we can write a draft Central Idea:
Version 1: Cities are important dense urban centers comprised of numerous residential, commercial, and governmental buildings and residences. Goods and services are available in cities.
How can we now improve this? Let’s use our Central Idea Checklist (Level 1: Basics (Language)) to find out:
Version 1: Cities are important dense urban centers comprised of numerous residential, commercial, and governmental buildings and residences. Goods and services are available in cities.
To improve our Central Idea, let’s combine to make one sentence, remove ‘important’ to keep things neutral, and make the verb more active:
Version 2: Cities provide goods and services in dense urban centers comprised of numerous residential, commercial, and governmental buildings and residences.
Let’s keep going by looking at the Level 2 Central Idea Checklist: Ready for Inquiry.
Now we see that we can incorporate more concepts, simplify the statement, and open it up a bit to invite more responses and ways to assess:
Version 3: Systems, services, and goods in cities can meet peoples’ needs.
If you feel ready, move on to Level 3 to improve your Central Idea even more by making sure it is global and significant!
For example, we can add interconnectedness which is stated in the transdisciplinary theme, and highlight human commonalities by specifying urban communities. By adding ‘can’, the Central Idea now prompts us to think about cities where needs are perhaps not met, creating opportunities to explore significant content such as sustainability. The addition of ‘urban’ invites investigation into how this might be interpreted across cultures and contexts.
Version 4: Interconnected systems, services, and goods in cities can meet the needs of urban communities.
Here are a few additional ‘before and after’ central ideas. See if you can use the provided checklists to identify which areas have been improved.
Did you notice how the improved versions invite a wider-range of interpretations and better promote conceptual understanding across subjects? Importantly, the improved central ideas also allow for the transfer of knowledge to other contexts.
As you can see, there are many choices we can make when crafting central ideas and also many layers of complexity to consider as our knowledge and experience grows. Through thoughtful collaborative planning, we can work together to ensure our students’ learning journeys are as effective as possible!
Throughout her career, Christine Orkisz Lang’s work and research have focused on learning in inquiry-based contexts, where she has developed expertise in designing structures to support improved learning and well-being. She is an author of the original International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (IB PYP), and her most recent school-based role was as the Primary School Principal at the Vienna International School. She has founded Core & More Education to support schools, leaders, teachers, and students using a focus on curriculum prioritization to address development, success criteria, and content overload and increase staff and student agency.
She holds an MEd in Mathematics and a PhD in Linguistics/Inquiry-Based Learning; has taught Primary and Middle School students in US, Austrian, and international schools; and has supported teachers and leaders in various capacities for over 30 years.
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Now that you’ve learned to ensure that your PYP Central Ideas incorporate the Key and Related Concepts, you might want to think about how to assess students’ understanding of these. You can use Qridi Core’s Key Concept assessment cards to help, especially with your youngest learners.
These cards use a research-based four-tier diagnostic approach: First, to check whether students understand the key concept word and then to check their reasoning. Next, the transfer of understanding/application is assessed and the certainty of students' answers is determined. Understanding.
This resource has been produced independently and is not endorsed by the IB. Qridi Core’s resources support the understanding and implementation of the IB programmes as described in the official IB guides and publications.