Chapter Five

Essential Questions

How do we deliberately stay focused on big ideas?

How can we take a mass of content/knowledge and shape it into engaging, thought provoding and effective work?

How can we avoid the twin sins of activity based and coverage based designs?

ANSWER….

Frame goals in terms of essential questions!

Pg. 105• What is a ture friend?

• How precise must we be?

• To what extent does art reflect culture or shape it?

• Must a story have a beginning, a middle, and an end?

• Is everthing quantifiable?

These questions are not answerable with finality or in a brief sentences

THAT’S THE POINT

THE AIM OF ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS IS TO…

• Stimulate tought

• Provode inquiry

• Spark more questions

• They are broad

• They are full of transfer possibilities

APPLE VINGETTE

Remember the Apple vingette???

What if we framed the unit with thought provoking avenues of inquiry?

• How have planting, growing and harvesting seasons affected life in the US?

• How have children’s roles at harvest changed over time?

Good essential questions point to and highlight the big ideas

Good questions are ones that pose dilemmas, subvert obvious or caononical truths or force incongrutities

-Bruner 1996

SO, ANCHOR CURRICULUM TO THOUGHT PROVOKIN QUESTIONS.

QUESTIONS CAN ALSO BE USED TO FRAME OUR CONTENT GOALS.

What if…

Content standards calls for students to learn the 3 branches of government .

A question could be, “How might a governemt guard agaisnts abuses of power?

– Helps stimulate students thinking about why we need checks and balances

“What were framer of the consititution trying to achieve?”

What makes a question essential?

• Best questions push us to the heart of things

• The very essence

• We can say that an academic field can be defined by it’s essential questions.

There are 4 connotations for essential questions

1. Qustion recur throughout all our lives –broad in scope

2. Core ideas within discipline

3. What is needed for learning core content

4. Questions that will most engage a specific and diverse set of learners.

Pg. 110

We propse tahta a question is essential if it is mearnt to…

1. Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content.

2. Porvoke ddep though, lively discussion, sustaning inquiry, and new understandingn as well as more questions.

3. Require students to consider alternativees, weigh evidence, suppport their ideas, and justify their answers.

4. Stimulate viatl, ongoing reghinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior lessons.

5. Spark meaningul connections with prio learning and personal experiences.

6. Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

4 categoies of big ideas relevant to effective skill learning

1. Key concepts

2. Purpose and vlue

3. Strategies and tactics

4. Context of use

Topical Vrs. Over Arching Essential Questions.

Differ in scope

More specific

• essctional questions are referred to as topicla

• Overaching – valuatble for framing courses

Refer to chart on p. 115 figure 5.1

• Ultimately, the learning plan will require curriclum designing to map out a sensible progression for moving from the accessible to the obscure

• Figure 5.3 p.120

Tips for generating essential questions

1. Identify topics

2. Derive essential questions from national/state standards

3. Derive esential questions from the enduring understandings.