To address the issue of overemphasizing teacher-led instruction while neglecting students’practical inquiry in core concept teaching, this paper takes“water level”as an example to explore an implementation pathway that constructs core concepts and integrates educational values through disciplinary practice. The study establishes a construction logic of“starting from practice, integrating into practice, and relying on practice,”creates authentic contexts, and implements a disciplinary practice approach: pre-class fi eld observation accumulates perceptual experience, and real-world problems are used to generate cognitive confl icts; in-class analogy is employed to extract the essential characteristics of water level; water level warning demonstrations and comparisons between ancient and modern hydrological monitoring are combined to deepen knowledge application; and statistical charts are utilized to organize knowledge threads and form structured cognition. Throughout the entire process, educational connotations—including huma–environment coordination, ancestral wisdom in water management, and the dedication of hydrological workers—are integrated, balancing knowledge learning with value cultivation. This provides a practical and implementable model for teaching core concepts in geography.