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Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding

Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding. Group 2 Presenters: Domenic DiDonato Jane Estes Meghan Hollibaugh Patricia Maia Erik Marcocchi David Vasiliauskas. ESSENTIAL aspects of ESSENTIAL questions . Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the BIG IDEAS and CORE CONTENT.

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Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding

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  1. Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding Group 2 Presenters: Domenic DiDonato Jane Estes Meghan Hollibaugh Patricia Maia Erik Marcocchi David Vasiliauskas

  2. ESSENTIAL aspects of ESSENTIAL questions • Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the BIG IDEAS and CORE CONTENT. 2. Provoke deep thought, lively discussion. 3. Require students to support their ideas, justify their answers, etc. 4. Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of the BIG IDEAS. 5. Spark meaningful connections with prior learning. 6. Recur and create opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

  3. Intent of the ESSENTIAL question’s purpose, audience, and impact is vital to the teacher-designer’s goal for students’ learning of subject content being taught. Seriousness of the designer’s question being pursued has direct significance in the broader context with regard to assignments, assessments and follow-up questions to determine whether the question ends up being ESSENTIAL. ESSENTIAL questions in skills areas provide students the life skill to be self-sufficient. This is a critical component in skills mastery.

  4. Focusing on the BIG IDEAS Shaping content into engaging, thought-provoking and effective work Framing goals through ESSENTIAL questions

  5. Questioning For Success ESSENTIAL questions are the signposts to the BIG IDEAS ESSENTIAL questions allow learners to explore key concepts, themes, theories, issues, and problems that reside within the content. Ex. “ How are stories from different places and times about? “ This ESSENTIAL question can lead students to the BIG IDEA about the human condition learned in great literature.

  6. GOOD questions elicit interesting and alternative views. GOOD questions spark meaningful connections from what we (teachers) bring …from prior classes and our own life experiences. GOOD questions cause us to rethink what we thought we understood . GOOD questions frame our content goals.

  7. ? The BEST questions push us to the HEART of things – the ESSENCE. Ex.- “What is democracy? How does this work? What does the author mean? Can we prove it? What should we do? What is its value?” Each academic field can be defined by its ESSENTIAL questions.

  8. BEST questions signal that inquiry and open-mindedness are central to expertise, that we must ALWAYS BE LEARNERS. A question is ALIVE in a subject if students really ENGAGE with it. A question is ALIVE in a subject if it seems genuine and relevant to them. A question is ALIVE in a subject if it helps students gain deeper understanding of what they’re learning.

  9. FOUR connotations are inherent in ESSENTIAL questions that recur throughout all our lives. BIG-IDEA questions signal that education is not just about learning “ the answer” but about learning how to learn. CORE IDEAS and inquiries within a discipline are those that point to the core of the big ideas in a subject. ESSENTIAL refers to what students need to effectively inquire and make sense of important but complicated ideas and knowledge. QUESTIONS that hook and hold the attention of your students are ESSENTIAL in that they will most engage a specific and diverse set of learners. Adults may not find them relevant but they are necessary for students to be captivated in their learning.

  10. Quotes To question means to lay open, to place in the open. Only a person who has questions can have [real understanding]. _Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1994, p. 365 “If the goal is to help students make good sense and use of what they learn, then the design must explicitly focus on the big ideas that connect and bring meaning to all the discrete facts and skills.”

  11. Essential Questions in Skill Areas • Essential Questions can be framed around 4 categories of big ideas relevant to effective skill learning: • Key Concepts • Purpose and Value • Strategy and Tactics • Context of Use

  12. An Example of Essential Questions in Skill Areas • Reading • Key Concept: How do you know that you comprehend what you are reading? • Purpose and Value: Why should readers regularly monitor their comprehension? • Strategy: What do good readers do when they don’t understand the test? • Context of Use: When should we use fix-up strategies?

  13. Essential Questions in Skill Areas • Understanding which skill to use when, how, and why, when confronted with complex performance challenges. • It seems that skill areas lack essential questions, because the most commonly used assessments require no transfer of knowledge, and no judgment.

  14. Topical vs. OverarchingEssential Questions • More specific essential questions, which can be definitively answered are topical. • Topical Example: “What lessons have we learned from the Vietnam War?” • General essential questions, which take us beyond any particular topic or skill, and point toward transferable understandings, are overarching. • Overarching Example: “What lessons have we learned or not learned from U.S. military involvement in foreign regional conflicts?”

  15. Figure 5.1: Overarching and Topical Essential Questions (p 115)

  16. A finer-grained look at essential questions Overarching (general or thematic) and Topical (concept or theme as it applies to content-specific texts)

  17. Essential Questions: 4 Insights 1. Framing a unit with only topical questions that focus on particular ideas and processes do not ensure transfer, regardless of how provocative or related to core content the question may be.

  18. 2. Framing the unit with only overarching and open questions may cause a drift into aimless discussion without ever touching down on the particular understandings related to content standards or core content.

  19. 3. Framing the unit with only guiding questions makes it unlikely that student will have the intellectual freedom and invitation to ask questions needed in a curriculum dedicated to understanding.

  20. 4. The best topical questions depend for their essentialness on being explicitly matched with related overarching questions.

  21. Essential questions: Emphasis on the plural • A single question cannot accomplish everything. • The best units are a result of building sets of varied and balanced interrelated questions. The art of teaching for understanding requires a delicate mix of open and guiding as well as topical and overarching questions. Overarching topical guiding open

  22. TIPS FOR GENERATING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

  23. ASKING QUESTIONS THAT CAN TAKE US BEYOND • THOUGHT PROVOKING • TRANSFER VALUE • LINK TO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE • REQUIRE CORE CONTENT AND MEET THE CRITERIA

  24. DERIVING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FROM NATIONAL OR STATE STANDARDS • REVIEW STANDARDS • IDENTIFY THE KEY NOUNS • MAKE THE NOUNS THE BASIS OF A QUESTION

  25. USING THE SIX FACETS FOR GENERATING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • EXPLANATION • INTERPRETATION • APPLICATION • PERSPECTIVE • EMPATHY • SELF-KNOWLEDGE

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