ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Opening Doors to Student Understanding
Based on the text Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding by Jay
McTighe and Grant Wiggins
WHAT MAKES A QUESTION ESSENTIAL?
Seven Defining Characteristics• Is open-ended• Is thought provoking & intellectually engaging• Calls for higher-order thinking• Points toward important, transferable ideas• Raises additional questions• Requires support and justification• Recurs over time
THREE CONNOTATIONS OF ESSENTIAL
Important and Timeless: arise naturally and
recur throughout life, are common and arguable
Elemental and Foundational:
Vital or Necessary for personal understanding
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Essential questions make our
unit plans more likely to yield
focused and thoughtful learning
and learners
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Essential questions:
Signal that inquiry is a key goal of education
Make it more likely that the unit will be intellectually engaging
Help to clarify and prioritize standards for teachers.
Provide transparency for students
Encourage and model metacognition for students
Provide opportunities for intra- and interdisciplinary connections
Support meaningful differentiation
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Essential questions provide transparency for
students.
The right questions, made transparent from the
start of a unit, help students’ ability to make
meaning, learn effectively, and create worthy
products and performances based on their
inquiries.
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Essential questions can provide opportunities for
intra- and interdisciplinary connections.• To what extent do the arts and sciences reflect an
era?• What can we learn from studying the past?• The connecting power of essential questions
becomes even greater if the units are also framed by process-focused questions.• What information will address this question?• How do I find out what I don’t know?• How will I know what to believe in the information I
find?• Is there another perspective I should consider?• What is the best way to show what I have learned?
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Carol Ann Tomlinson recommends that teachers
show all of their students respect for their
capacity to learn.
A practical way to do this is through the regular
use of EQs.
By posing the same essential questions for a
class, we signal to students that we respect their
intelligence and capacity to think.
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Yes, but……what about PASS testing?• An educator’s job is not to simply cover content. • Our role is to cause learning, not merely to mention
things.• Our task is to uncover the important ideas and
processes of the content so that students are able to make helpful connections and are equipped to transfer learning in meaningful ways.
• If we wish to engage learners in making meaning of the learning so that they come to understand it, then essential questions will serve the cause of mastery of content.
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Research shows that increasing the number of higher order
questions in classrooms and on local assessments significantly
improves student achievement on standardized tests.
Because understanding and transfer demand active
construction of meaning by the learner, and because long-
term and flexible recall requires an intellectual framework of
ideas in which to place content knowledge, only students who
have learned for understanding can perform well on rigorous
tests.
WHY USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Discuss page 27 of Essential Questions: Opening
Doors to Student Understanding by Jay McTighe
and Grant Wiggins
HOW DO WE DESIGN ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Text-based discussion protocol using Tool 36
from Quality Performance Assessments: A Guide
for Schools and Districts by the Center for
Collaborative Education
Chps. 1 and 3
HOW DO WE USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Teachers must build a culture in their classroom
that supports intellectual risk taking.
Teachers should value thoughtful, not
thoughtless, responses to questions
HOW DO WE USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Read paragraph on page 43 beginning with
Teachers ask questions.
How do you feel about the differences between
Japan and the United States? Discuss
HOW DO WE USE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS?
Successful implementation of EQ starts with
clear and explicit goals.
Essential questions should be used to spark
discussions, not a hunt for the right answer.
KEY IDEAS TO COMMUNICATE
TO STUDENTS
There’s not a single correct answer
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion
Everyone in the class is fair game…(the teacher
doesn’t just call on students with their hand
raised)
It is ok to challenge someone else’s opinion
Making mistakes is ok and a part of learning
FOUR PHASES FOR IMPLEMENTING
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Phase 1: Introduce a question designed to cause
inquiry.
Goal: Make sure the EQ is thought provoking and
relevant to the student and the course content.
Phase 2: Elicit various responses and question them.
Goal: Use questioning strategies to gather many different,
yet plausible answers from your students.
FOUR PHASES FOR IMPLEMENTING
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Phase 3: Introduce and explore new perspectives.
Goal: Bring new text, data, or phenomena to the inquiry,
designed to deliberately extend inquiry or call into
question tentative conclusions.
Phase 4: Reach tentative closure.
Goal: Ask students to generalize their findings and new
learning in the context of the course content.
A CLOSER LOOK AT ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
1)Pre-instructional planning and design
2)Initial posing of the question
3)Eliciting of varied student responses
4)Probing those responses
5)Introduction of new information and perspectives
6)In-depth and sustained inquiry culminating in products or
performance
7) Tentative closure
8) Assessment of individual student inquiry and answers
RESPONSE STRATEGIES TO ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Wait Time
Think-Pair-Share
Random Calling
Class Survey
More Than One Answer
Probes for Thinking and Support
Devil’s Advocate
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN CLASSROOMS?
Eight elements within our control that underlie and
support a classroom culture of inquiry
Element 1: Nature of Learning Goals• If understanding and critical thinking are among
the desired outcomes, do our curriculum and assessments reflect these goals?
• In depth thinking is required for success• Higher order questions are essential
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN
CLASSROOMS?
3 types of learning goals (Page 84)• Acquisition—Acquire factual information• Meaning Making—Construct meaning(Come to an
understanding)• Transfer****
Read paragraph 1 on pages 84 to 85
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN
CLASSROOMS?
Tips to making learning goals explicit and clear
(page 85)• Post EQs prominently around the room, refer to
regularly• Write out learning goals for the year• Plan units, separate goals into the 3 groups• Post different types of EQs and discuss with students• Discussion rubrics for EQs
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN
CLASSROOMS?
Element 2: The Roles of Questions, Teachers, &
Students• The question has to become more important that the
answer• The teacher must become a facilitator and co-
inquirer• Students must become their own teachers,
increasingly responsible for their own progress
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN
CLASSROOMS?
Element #3: Explicit Protocols and Codes of Conduct
Element #4: Safe and Supportive Environment• Tone of voice• Wait time• # higher order ?s vs lower level ?s• Reactions to student comments
Element #5: Use of Space and Physical Resources• Circles facilitate conversations
Element #6: Use of Time in and out of Class• Plan time in your lessons
Element #7: Use of Texts and Other Learning Resources
Element #8: Assessment practices
HOW DO WE ESTABLISH A CULTURE OF INQUIRY IN
CLASSROOMS?
Element #7: Use of Texts and Other Learning
Resources• Read top of page 96
Element #8: Assessment practices• What gets measured get done.• Must assess students’ ability to question, probe and
to respond to higher level questions with evidence and argument.
• Read page 97… A truly hardworking, analytical discussion….