Research On The Application Of Big Concept Teaching In Middle School Geography

The introduction of the "double reduction" policy has put forward higher requirements for school education and teaching,and it has become an inevitable choice to optimize teaching methods and strengthen teaching management to reduce students’ learning burden,improve learning efficiency and enhance the quality of school education.The improvement of school education depends on the specific implementation of each subject,which makes the reduction of burden with higher quality become the key to implement the "double reduction".Geography is a basic subject in compulsory education,and the implementation of "double reduction" through geography teaching has an inescapable responsibility and obligation.Big concept teaching is a teaching method with big concepts as the core,aiming at cultivating students’ ability to apply their knowledge to solve real-world problems,which coincides with the core literacy advocated by the new curriculum standards.The big concepts point to the core concepts and key problems of the subject,which is conducive to students’ construction of knowledge system and implementation of core literacy,so as to achieve quality and efficiency of teaching.This paper analyzes the current situation of big concept teaching in junior high school geography by conducting questionnaire surveys on teachers and students;Then it explores the extraction path of big concepts and the implementation path of big concept teaching;After that,it carries out the overall curriculum design of the unit and takes "Natural Resources and Natural Disasters in China" in the first book of Grade 8 of Guangdong People’s Publishing House as an example to sort out the big concept system.Then,we conducted an empirical analysis with two eighth grade classes of Ganzhou 15 th Middle School,and tested the actual teaching effect of the big concept teaching mode through horizontal comparison and longitudinal questionnaire analysis;Finally,we proposed improvement measures based on the feedback to provide teaching reference for the classroom practice of big concept teaching.The following conclusions were drawn from the practical study.First,the extraction path of the big concepts of geography is clarified.There are three main sources of extraction: curriculum standards,textbook analysis and main ideas of the subject.The extraction method is through the hierarchical construction method of "geographic facts and phenomena-basic concepts-general concepts-core concepts –big concepts",which is generally expressed in the form of declarative sentences.Secondly,the "six-step" process of the overall design of the unit under the big concept is determined.In other words,there are six steps: extracting the big concept,determining the theme of the unit,formulating the learning objectives,designing the assessment,designing the learning activities,and assigning the homework.And each step is sequentially related to the other.Third,in the two evaluations of the effect of implementing big concept teaching,the mean scores of the experimental class were higher than those of the control class in both examinations and the difference gradually increased,from 1.34 points higher in the first examination to 2.35 points higher in the second examination.Analyzing the questionnaires of the experimental class before and after the implementation of big concept teaching,we found that there were fundamental changes in teachers’ teaching methods,and students’ learning efficiency was greatly improved.It shows that big concept teaching can promote the quality and efficiency of geography teaching.Fourth,the application of big concept teaching to geography teaching also has the following problems.First,because of the lack of supporting teaching materials,teachers provide too much supplementary materials,and students do not know how to review;Second,the assessment method is too single,mostly based on written exercises;Third,the inconsistent teaching assessment in the general environment leads to students’ unsatisfactory examination results and frustrates learning motivation.As a result,the following solutions are proposed: first,develop a long-cycle teaching plan covering the whole school period;second,sort out the knowledge system of large units,and carefully design the large context of the units as well as compile school-based teaching materials;third,develop diversified teaching evaluation methods.