Enduring Understanding and Essential Questions

in Inquiry Instruction

Gretchen Lee- MRH 4th/5th

g.lee@mrhsd.k12.mo.us

What are we going to do today?

• Review characteristics of Inquiry instruction.• Discuss how EUs and EQs frame the way we

plan/will plan learning activities? • Review process and considerations when generating

meaningful EUs and EQs.• Work time • Discuss/Share our Enduring Understandings and

Essential Questions and how they’ll contribute to powerful Inquiry instruction.

• Discuss how students will interact with the EUs and EQs.

The EU and EQ for today

• How do EUs and EQs frame and influence what and how you teach?

• EUs and EQs influence the quality and meaningfulness of the content you teach.

CR (Culturally Relevant) Protocols I use w/ EUs & EQs

• Numbered Heads Together

• Tea Party

• Musical Shares

• Shout Out

Inquiry Characteristics• Based on involvement• Involvement is essential to understanding• Question based• Focused on learning the content for the

purpose of using it (balance btw school learning and life-long learning)

• Spontaneous, Collaborative, Fun, and Memorable

• Understanding are contextualized in experiences- “Remember that time when…”

EUs and EQs Premises• Begin with the end in mind.• Teachers are designers- we are the experts of what our

students need to know.• Design what you are going to teach (curriculum)- based on state

standards AND what you know is important.• Design how you are going to teach (pedagogy). • What we teach- is primarily informed by national, state, &

district standards that dictate what students should know and be able to do. – Challenges us to be more thoughtful & deliberate about

what we teach and how we teach. What kind of thinkers and people we are contributing to?

EUs and EQsStage 1- Identify desired results This step is about clarifying priorities to make sure that content is worthy ofunderstanding.

• What curriculum expectations do we need to meet? (GLEs)• What should they know and be able to do (filter

GLE’s b/c some are facts, knowledge, and others big concepts)

• What ENDURING understandings do we want them to come away with?

– What life-long questions are worth pondering?

Filtering the standardsFor any subject taught in primary school,we might ask [is it] worth an adult’sknowing, and whether having known it asa child makes a person a better adult. Anegative or ambiguous answer means thematerial is cluttering up the curriculum. (Wiggins & McTighe,66)

Why understandings have to be meaningful

• Learning that does not penetrate to the core of what is vital about an idea yields abstract, alien, and uninteresting lessons. (Wiggins & McTighe, 68)

• Understandings are intended to be empowering- personally and intellectually – That’s why we have to constantly be

thinking…to what end?

Understandings• Understanding is not “yes” or “no” but a

matter of degrees• Doing something correctly isn’t evidence of

understanding, by itself. To understand is to have done it in the right way, often reflected in being able to explain why a particular skill, approach, or body of knowledge is or is not appropriate in a particular situation. (Wiggins & McTighe , 39)

• Understanding is about transfer being able to use what we have learned in new and sometimes confusing settings. (Wiggins & McTighe, 40)

• Dewey said, understanding must be “comprehended” and knowledge “apprehended” (Wiggins & McTighe, 58)

Something to consider…• 6 facets of understandings

– Some units lend themselves more to certain understandings- depending on the big ideas you’re trying to develop through the class.

– Wiggins & McTighe , pg. 120- Figure 5.3

6 Facets of Understandings• Explanation- What, Why and How• Interpretation- Insights, text to life, contextualized, stories• Application- “I have a connection.” Real world problems• Perspective- What does it look like from another point of view.

Involves weighing diff. plausible explanations, debates• Empathy- Respect for people different from themselves.

Causes them to be open-minded, primary sources, music, poetry, experiential

• Self-Knowledge- develop self-consciousness, knowing one’s own ignorance and patterns of thought.

*Also good for assessment. I use this for essay/short answer tests.

Writing Enduring Understandings

1. Look at your standards2. Group large amounts of content, especially discrete

facts, knowledge and basic skills into big ideas (questions/understandings) and core tasks (performance tasks).

3. Make deliberate choices and set explicit priorities for what you can do in the unit well.

- What is most important?– How do the pieces connect?– What should I pay attention to?– What are the few bottom-line priorities?

4. From the big ideas that emerge form the content into statements that’ll help students organize and make sense of the information they’ll be taught and their world.

Essential Questions- Characteristics

• “Good questions are one that pose dilemmas, subvert obvious ‘truths’ or force incongruities upon our attention.” (Wiggins & McTighe,107)

• They are questions that recur throughout all our lives. (Wiggins & McTighe,108)

• The best questions push us to the heart of things!

Checklist for “Essentialness”

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

2. Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understandings as well as more questions.

3. Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers.

4. Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior lessons.

5. Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences.

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

Remember• No question is inherently essential (or

trivial, complex or important) (Wiggins & McTighe,110)– Depends on the purpose, audience, and

impact. – What do you intend the students to do with

the question? How do you intend for them to think?

Open vs. Guiding• This spells out your intent

– Open questions- No definitive answer is expected, challenges students’ thinking

– Guiding questions- moves students towards a deeper understanding of a big idea, posed as a means of uncovering desired understandings

Topical vs. Overarching• Now that you have your intent…You want a

mix between overarching and topical. • Overarching

– Limitation: Only overarching is too vague- drift into aimless discussion- won’t link to content

– Benefit: challenges thinking & connects to the world

• Topical– Limitation: Only topical doesn’t facilitate transfer.– Benefit: Necessary for focusing on desired unit

priorities.

Essential Question Chart- Wiggins & McTighe, 116

Intent Overarching Topical

Open - To what extent is US history a history of progress? What is “progress”?

- What is a true friend?

- How might Congress have better protected minority rights in the 1950s and 1960s?

- Should Frog have lied to Toad?

Guiding - How much progress in civil rights has the US made since the founding of the country?

- What are the signs of a “fair weather” friend?

- What were the defining moments of the civil rights movement?

- In what ways was Frog acting like a friend in the story?

Writing Essential Questions1. Begin with Enduring Understandings

- you can also derive essential questions from national and state standards

- Jeopardy format- given the content you’ll teach (imagine assessments and activities)- what’s the question you’ll answer.

2. Generate a list of questions- put them in kid language3. Discuss what makes them essential

- what should they be thinking about- why should they think those things and in that way

4. Consider the balance between topical and broad questions.

Stage One and Pedagogy• Stage One and Pedagogy Interaction-- What you believe and

what you believe is important for students to learn (stage 1) informs what and how you teach.

• How we design learning activities to meet curricular goals- refers to our pedagogy. This concerns itself with questions around, “What kind of thinkers/ people/ citizens are we producing?” (The combination of what you teach and how you teach is aiding the development of certain identities among your students!)

• Scholars Giroux and Simon on critical pedagogy: “When one practices pedagogy, one acts with the intent of creating experiences that will organize and disorganize a variety of understandings of our nation and social world in particular ways…Pedagogy is a concept which draws attention to the processes through which knowledge is produced.” (Laddson-Billings, 14)

ResourcesWiggins, Grant and Jay McTighe.

Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition. 2005.

Laddson-Billings, Gloria. The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. 1994.

http://www.culturallyresponsive.org/