What are Big Ideas?

Teaching for UnderstandingMaking our courses more effective

This is a message from your system AER committee…

Please don’t shoot the messenger!

Do you feel confused by all of the AER terms and concepts?

AER Terms Prezihttps://prezi.com/secure/024d4167a7bb4c89ecde2198f8e6f14f1be4bf58/

Trying to make sense of it all

Now you can be stressed!

What are the Learning Goals Today?

• To define Big Ideas & Essential Questions• To see where the concepts came from• To determine why they are important• To pick up some hints on how to extract the Big

Ideas and develop Essential Questions from curriculum

• To prepare for a session later where you will work on developing Big Ideas and Essential Questions for a course you teach

• To develop a set of Anchor posters for your classes on these topics

Where do these terms come from?

• Understanding by design by McTighe and Wiggins “UbD”

• Developers of the concept of Design Down or Backward design for curriculum development

Principles of Understanding by Design

• Planning is best done “backward” from the desired results

• “plan with the end in mind”• Expectations are transformed into targets

based upon “big ideas,” essential questions and transfer tasks

U by D demands a shift in focus

• From:– Teach for content

mastery– Discrete skills or facts

out of context– “Linear” superficial

coverage– Text as Curriculum

• To:– Help students learn to use

content and understand– Draw on skills in realistic

contexts & authentic tasks– A curriculum based upon

reoccurring “big ideas” and core tasks

– Text as a resource in support of learning goals

How does it fit?• Three stages of Backward Design

Stage 1: Identify Desired ResultsExpectations to Big Ideas to Essential Questions to Skills and Knowledge needed to achieve this

Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence“Begin with the end in mind”Think about what Core Tasks; Performance Tasks or demonstrations of learning will provide valid evidence of a student’s ability to achieve the desired results

Stage 3: Plan Learning ExperiencesPlan lessons in a structured way under the umbrella of essential questions.

Why is this important?• Curriculum design requires us to make choices

about what is essential NOW to help our learners in the future.

• Learning not tied to real-world experiences is soon forgotten.

• You must try to “hit the proverbial nerve” of your students to promote real learning

• Without transparent and important priorities - stated as performance, not content - neither teacher nor student can be effective

What is a Big Idea?• A big idea offers a conceptual framework

allowing the learner to explore answers to the essential questions involving a unit of study. -Grant Wiggins

• Answer questions like: – Why exactly are we teaching…?– What couldn’t people do if they didn’t understand…?– What do we want students to understand and be able

to do 5 years from now?

I feel bad because I was always telling him to think big.

You want them to see what you see!

But…

• “What is big to the teacher or the expert in the field is often abstract, lifeless, confusing, or irrelevant to the student. What may be a vital conception to the expert in the field of study may well seem nonsensical, unintelligible, or of little interest to the novice.” p. 75 UbD

• “The challenge of teaching for understanding is largely the challenge of making the big ideas in the field become big in the mind of the learner.” p. 75 UbD

What is an enduring understanding?

• One or more Big Ideas framed as an understanding!!!! (in a sentence)

• A Big Idea is developed by the lessons that organize the learning of the skills and knowledge that allow students to uncover its meaning by answering essential questions.

• It is an on-going process!

How does it fit?

1. Curriculum Documents-unpacking the Overall and Specific Expectations

2. Big Ideas & Enduring Understandings-Makes you think of Core Tasks (Performance Tasks) &

Assessments

3. Essential Questions4. Lesson Learning Goals & Development

Clarifying Content Priorities

• Content that is worth being familiar with

• Content that is important to know and do

• “Big Ideas”

Unpacking the curriculumStandard (we call them expectations)Students will compare and contrast (purposes, sources of power) various forms of government in the world

(e.g., monarchy, democracy, republic, dictatorship) and evaluate how effective they have been in establishing order, providing security and accomplishing common goals.

Verbs (How students will show what is required)CompareContrastEvaluate

Nouns (What students are required to know) Forms of Government:MonarchyDemocracyRepublicDictatorshipOrderSecurityCommon goals

Examples of abstract curricula • The earth does not appear to move to human observers• There are no obvious signs of our being descended from

primates• It seems bizarre that the founding fathers of the U.S.

democratic system kept slaves• The text of Hamlet seems to have nothing to do with

adolescent angst and depression• Derivatives and integrals make no conceptual sense to

the novice calculus student• The facts found on Wikipedia are less credible than facts

found in academic journals

Revealing the Big IdeasBig ideas are revealed, not identified, through…• Focusing themes or concepts• On-going debate• Insightful perspectives• Finding underlying assumptions• Paradoxes, problems, challenges• Organizing theories• Overarching principles• Provocative questions• Processes in the field; problem-solving, decision-making

• By identifying the nouns and verbs in the standards or overall expectations.

What is the difference? • Expectations: written from the point of view of “all students will…”• Big Ideas: Stated concisely

“all forms of measurement contain errors”• Essential Questions:

– Stated as questions in a way that provides an umbrella for learning a host of skills and knowledge

– Engaging and real for students (in words students can understand)– “How does the use of measuring devices introduce error into

measurement?”• Learning Goals:

– Written as performance statements with reference to Big Ideas and Essential questions and refer to the actual goals of lessons designed to help students answer the essential questions (should be explicit in every lesson)

– E.g. “Today’s learning goal is to perform an activity using several measuring devices in order for students to learn the type and degree of errors involved in each device.”

Why are Big Ideas important?• Student engagement increases

– Curriculum ties to other courses and life – Authentic tasks make it real– Students know the reason why they are doing each

lesson as it fits into the big picture of the – Essential Questions are generated from Big Ideas

and form the basis for our lessons and student learning by linking knowledge and skills to a greater purpose and creating deeper understanding.

– Essential questions are worded in language students can understand

• Deeper understanding allows students to transfer knowledge and skills to meet new challenges.

Criteria…Types of Big Ideas1. Concepts…economics…”supply & demand”2. Themes…good triumphs over evil3. Debates…a winning team is one where

offence beats defence; conservative vs. liberal4. Perspective…the glass is half full or half empty5. Paradox…freedom involves responsibility;

poverty amid plenty6. Theory…form follows function7. Principle…less is more8. Assumption…non-fiction text always depicts

truth; markets are rational9. Authentic problems…voter apathy

Big Idea checklist…

1. Does it have many layers not obvious to the inexperienced learner? Is it an “Umbrella term”

2. Does one have to dig deep to truly understand its meaning or implications?

3. Is it prone to disagreement?4. Might it change over time?5. Does it go to the core of the curriculum? Is it

historically important yet, still alive in the field for debate?

Big Idea checklist continued…

6. Is it transferable to new situations and learnings a student will meet in the future?

7. Is it abstract, not obvious?8. Is it counterintuitive?9. Is it prone to misconception?10.Does it allow students to ask and re-ask

questions to clarify and uncover the idea as they go through the course?

What a Big Idea is not…

• A question• A concept or piece of knowledge• A narrow concept• Written as an objective/expectation of

students• An activity (e.g. can sort French words into

lists of nouns and verbs)• A skill – can light a Bunsen burner

What are essential questions?• Questions based on Big Ideas that frame

learning goals of a course. (May have several for a Big Idea).

• They are not answerable with finality in a brief sentence

• They stimulate on-going thought as new experiences help clarify them for learners.

• They provide focus for the Big Ideas throughout a course using language that is understandable by students

Essentials of essential questions1. Cause genuine and relevant inquiry 2. Broad in scope, and provoke deep thought, lively discussion,

inquiry, and more questions; never fully answered3. Pose authentic dilemmas4. Force incongruities into our attention5. Require students to consider alternative views, weigh

evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers6. Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking and meaningful connections

of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons and learning; timeless in nature

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

8. Perpetually arguable…the answers will change over time for students as they see them again in new subject settings and add new experience

So…

• “Instead of thinking of content as stuff to be covered, consider knowledge and skill as the means of addressing questions central to understanding key issues in your subject.” p. 107 UbD

From content to Big Ideas to EQ’s

Content Big Idea/Enduring Understandings

Essential Questions

Nutrition You are what you eat

How does what we eat affect us?

Fairness Statistics can tell any story

How do different statistical tools provide different information?

Persuasive writing Language can be used to support an argument

How can literary devices be used to persuade?

From content to Big Ideas to EQ’s

Content Big idea/Enduring Understanding

Essential Questions

Westward expansion

Hardship forged a nation

How did the settlement of the west contribute to our nation?

Experiment Experiments are only as good as their design

How do variables increase reliability of experimental results?

Composition of images

Composition is integral to effective images

Is a well-composed image more effective?

Essential Questions from our Big Ideas

• Design of curriculum influences the success of our students.– How does Backward design lead to better student

understanding?• Big Ideas are uncovered from curriculum and

organize our teaching and assessment.– How can Big Ideas be uncovered in our curriculum?– What would students have to do to demonstrate they

understand the Big Idea?

Essential Questions from our Big Ideas

• Essential Questions are generated from Big Ideas and form the basis for our lessons and student learning by linking knowledge and skills to a greater purpose and creating deeper understanding.– How can Big Ideas be phrased so that

students understand them?– What makes Essential Questions effective?

Future LearningLearning Goals

1. On Feb 2nd …Time to work on extracting the Big Ideas from one of your courses and developing essential questions.

2. Ultimate goal is to develop a set of “posters” that show these Big Ideas and essential questions for use in the classroom to anchor your teaching.