Writing Essential Questions for Rigorous Learning Using Essential Questions in the LDC Template Tasks Literacy Design Collaborative What is an Essential Q uestion Grant Wiggins An essential question iswell essential important vital at the heart of the matterthe essence of th ID: 135661
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Slide1
Professional Development
Writing Essential Questions
for Rigorous Learning
Using Essential Questions in the LDC Template Tasks
Literacy Design CollaborativeSlide2
What is an Essential Q
uestion
?Grant Wiggins
“An essential question is…well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter-the essence of the issue. It is a question that any thoughtful and intellectually-alive person ponders and should keep pondering.” Slide3
Understanding by Design
Grant Wiggins
The term “essential” refers to what is needed for the learning of core content. A question is essential when it helps students make sense of important but complicated ideas, knowledge, and know-how.Slide4
When is a Question Essential?
Grant Wiggins
When it causes relevant inquiry into big ideas and core content
When it provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understandings as well as more questionsWhen it requires students to consider alternativesSlide5
When is a Question Essential?
Grant
Wiggins
When it stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessonsWhen it sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experienceWhen it creates opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjectsSlide6
Examples Offered by Grant Wiggins
How well can fiction reveal truth?
Why did
one particular species/culture/person thrive and another one barely survived or died? How does what we measure influence how we measure?
How
does how we measure influence what we measure?
Is there really a difference between a cultural generalization and a stereotype? Slide7
Teacher Definition of Essential
Question
Authentic Education Website
“An essential question is when a teacher opens a whole new world to the students. It leads to a higher order of thinking by pulling out content knowledge, connecting the knowledge to the topic at hand and seeing how one can improve. In the common core classes, the summative assessment is usually the final assessment on student outcomes. However, in CTE classes, students have the opportunity to evaluate their projects and think of ways they can improve those projects, it is always an ongoing process.”
Posted
by: Joyce Miyamoto on June 29, 2011Slide8
LDC Uses Essential Questions to Begin Half of the Template Tasks
Beginning a template task with a compelling, open-ended question is the starting point for a rigorous teaching task.Slide9
Essential Question: Argumentation/Analysis Modules
Task
2 ELA Example:
Would you recommend A Wrinkle in Time to a middle school reader? After reading this science fiction novel, write a review that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the text. Task 2 Social Studies Example: How did the political views of the signers of the Constitution impact the American political system?
After
reading
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,
write a report that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the text. Slide10
Essential Question: Argumentation/Analysis Modules
Task
2 Science Example:
Does genetic testing have the potential to significantly impact how we treat disease? After reading scientific sources, write a report that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the texts. L2 Be sure to acknowledge competing views. L3 Give examples from past or current events or issues to illustrate and clarify your position. Slide11
Essential Question: Economics
Task 2. SS Argumentation/Analysis L1,
2
[Insert question] After reading ______ (literature or informational texts), write _______ (essay or substitute) that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the text(s). L2 Be sure to acknowledge competing views. L3 Give examples from past or current events or issues to illustrate and clarify your position.
Teaching task
What
combination of market and command systems do you believe creates an ideal mixed economy?
After reading informational and opinion texts, write an essay that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the texts. Be sure to acknowledge competing views. Slide12
Essential Question: Social Studies
Argumentation
/Analysis L1, 2,
3[Insert question] After reading ________ (literature or informational texts), write _______ (essay or substitute) that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the text(s). L2 Be sure to acknowledge competing views. L3 Give examples from past or current events or issues to illustrate and clarify your position.
Teaching task
What do the immigration laws written between 1880 and 1930 tell us about American values during that time period?
After
reading primary and secondary sources about U.S. immigration and related legislation between 1880 and 1930, write an essay that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the texts.
L2
Be sure to acknowledge competing views.
L3
Give examples from past or current events or issues to illustrate and clarify your position. Slide13
Writing good essential questions begins with a key question for the teacher:
What are the most important concepts that I want my students to learn from the unit or lesson of instruction? Slide14
Why start a unit, module or lesson with a question?
Essential questions suggest inquiry
Essential questions are a way to set the focus and organize the lesson around key concepts implicit in the standards and curriculum
Essential questions lead to creative and critical thinkingSlide15
Setting the Criteria for an
Essential Question
Students should be able to comprehend the question
The language of the question focuses on concepts that are stated in broad termsQuestions for modules or units of study should follow some logical sequence that maps back to the curriculumSlide16
What follows from the
Essential Question?
By asking some follow-up questions, teachers may decide to revise the essential question
The questions will also help the teacher to determine what mini-tasks are needed to support the students in responding to the essential questionSlide17
Basic Prompts F
ollowing
the Essential Q
uestionWhat should the student have learned prior to the teaching task? What will the student need to know in order to answer the question?
What
strategies will actively engage the student as they work toward the answer?
What
formative assessments will inform if the students are learning the information?
What
skills will the students
need in order
to demonstrate their response to the question? Slide18
Open Questions Create Complexity of Thought
Eleanor Dougherty in her new book,
Assignments Matter,
discusses essential questions: “A good question provokes examination of texts and ideas, and sometimes situations and conditions.”Slide19
Literal vs. Essential Questions
Eleanor Dougherty goes on to draw this distinction:
“
Literal questions are good for classroom discussion and quizzes, but open-ended and essential questions give a unit or assignment intellectual heft.”Slide20
Examples from
Assignments
Matter
Why did Lago betray Othello?Is the universe infinite?What is art?Slide21
The Power of Essential Questions
There is an excellent example in
Assignments Matter
that describes a Socratic seminar using this question: What is the proper role of the individual in a natural disaster?Slide22
The Task Follows the Question
After reading various perspectives on individual responsibility and examining an interactive map of the 2010 Gulf Oil disaster, write a letter to a younger student that addresses the question and support your position with evidence from the texts.
(See page 105,
Assignments Matter)Slide23
Create Essential Questions That Drive Rigorous Tasks
Assignment for this module of the course is:
Read over pages 1-34 in the Appendix of the LDC Handbook. This section is called: Template Task Collection 1.
2. On pages 3-5 there is a quick reference task chart that shows which tasks begin with essential questions. Create essential questions for tasks 2, 8 and 25.
3
. Using
one of the template tasks that you elected in #1,
write
two
mini-tasks that would support your students in
accomplishing
the task.Slide24
References
Wiggins,Grant
.
www.authenticeducation.com. Hopewell, NJ 08525. David Jakes and Internet Innovations, Inc. 2002.
Dougherty, Eleanor (2008)
Assignments Matter.
Tucson, AZ:
EDThink
, LLC.
Literacy Design
C
ollaborative Handbook (2011).