Essential questions

1. Blooms Taxonomy, Essential Questions, and Understanding by Design
EDUU552

2. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956)
Various types of learning outcomes within the cognitive domain
Objectives could be classified according to type of learner behavior described
A hierarchical relationship exists among the various types of outcomes
Benjamin Bloom
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
3. KNOWLEDGE: define, list, name, memorize
COMPREHENSION: identify, describe, explain
APPLICATION: demonstrate, use, show, teach
ANALYSIS: categorize, compare, calculate
SYNTHESIS: design, create, prepare, predict
EVALUATION: judge, assess, rate, revise
Blooms Original Taxonomy
4. Ask students to demonstrate:
Knowledge - recall information in original form
Comprehension - show understanding
Application - use learning in a new situation
Analysis - show s/he can see relationships
Synthesis - combine and integrate parts of prior knowledge into a product, plan, or proposal that is new
Evaluation - assess and criticize on basis of standards and criteria
Thinking Levels
5. Blooms Revised Taxonomy
Creating

Creating designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making

6. Evaluating checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring 7. Analyzing comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating 8. Applying implementing, carrying out, using, executing 9. Understanding interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying 10. Remembering recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, findingEvaluating
Analyzing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
http://uwf.edu/cutla/assessstudent.cfm
11. Knowledge or Remembering Recalling Information
Where What Who How many Point to
Comprehension or Understanding
Tell me in your own words What does it mean?
Give me an example, describe, illustrate
Application Using learning in a new situation
What would happen if?Would you have done the same?How would you solve this problem?
In the library, find information about.
Blooming Questions
12. Analysis Ability to see parts/relationships
What other ways? Similar/Different (Venn)
Interpretation What kind of person? What caused the person to react in this way?What part was most exciting, sad?
Synthesis Parts of information to create original whole
What would it be like if? Design, pretend, use your imagination, write a new ending
More Blooming Questions
13. Evaluation and Synthesis
Judgment based on Criteria
Literature
Would you recommend this book WHY or WHY not?
Select the best WHY?
Which person in history would you most like to meet and WHY?
Is the quality good or bad?WHY?
Could this story have happened?WHY?
Creating at top of revised Blooms Taxonomy - Innovation
Highest Levels of Questioning
14. Essential Questions at the top of Blooms Taxonomy
Create - innovate
Evaluate make a thoughtful choice between options, with the choice based on a clearly stated criteria
Synthesize invent a new or different version
Analyze develop a thorough and complex understanding through skillful questioning.
Framing Essential Questions
15. Spark our curiosity and sense of wonder
Desire to understand
Something that matters to us
Answers to EQs can NOT be found
Students must construct own answers
Make their own meaning from information they have gathered
Create insight
Essential Questions: EQs
16. Answering such questions may take a lifetime!
Answers may only be tentative
Information gathering may take place outside of formal learning environments
Engage students in real life applied problem solving
EQ lend themselves to multidisciplinary investigations.
Essential Questions
17. Framed by students themselves
Best to start with subsidiary questions that might help support the main question
Formulate categories of related questions
What else do we need to know?
State suppositions
Hypothesizing and Predicting
Thought process helps provide a basis for construction of meaning.
Ideal Essential Questions
18. Understanding by Design
What are the big ideas?
Core concepts
Focusing themes
On-going debates/issues
Insightful perspectives
Illuminating paradox/problem
Organizing theory
Overarching principle
Underlying assumption
Whats the evidence?
How do we get there?
Enduring Understanding
Desired Results: What will the student learn?
Acceptable Evidence: How will you design an assessment that accurately determines if the student learned what he/she was supposed to learn?
Lesson Planning: How do you design a lesson that results in student learning?
Identify desired results
Determine acceptable evidence
Plan learning experiences and instruction
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
Enduring
Understanding
Will this lesson lead to enduring understanding?
Assessment Types
Traditional quizzes and tests
Paper/pencil
Selected response
Constructed response
Performance tasks and projects
Open-ended
Complex
Authentic
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
Enduring
Understanding
Performance tasks and projects need assessments that
are more authentic than traditional quizzes and tests.
22. Rubric - a scoring guide for evaluating student performance
Allows for a variety of criteria or categories to be evaluated on a sliding rating scale (not subject to one final percentage score as in testing)
A way to measure real-life, authentic learning experiences in the classroom
Provides a guide for students in determining expectations of assignments
Shows students and parents how the teacher is judging student performance
Rubrics for Assessment
23. Allows teacher to focus on what expectations he/she have for student work
Provides alternative grading system for performance assessment, portfolios, projects, web assignments, etc.
Can measure a variety of categories in any content area
Teacher can determine criteria and scale - rather than be subject to standardized testing scores.
Rubrics for Assessment
24. Clear targets:
Provide clear descriptions of specific achievement expectations to be assessed.
Measure one or more of the four achievement expectations.
Assure that evaluators understand and remain aware of what they are assessing.
Focused purpose:
Clarify the intended uses of the assessment results.
Specify whose information needs the assessment will meet: teachers, curriculum developers, and policymakers.
Proper method:
Use an assessment method that is suited to the assessment goals (such as essays, direct communication, selected response or extended investigations).
PALS Five Features of Good Performance Assessment
25. Sound sampling:
Provide a representative sample of all the questions that can be asked.
Produce results of maximum quality at minimum cost in time and effort.
Yield confident inferences about how the respondent would have done given all possible exercises.
Accurate assessment free of bias and distortion:
Present sources of inference and error that may have affected the development and implementation of the assessment.
Anticipate sources of bias that can create ambiguity in results.
PALS Five Features of Good Performance Assessment