UBD 101 Workshop Notes
Essential Question
= a question that lies at the heart of a subject or a curriculum (as opposed to being either trivial or leading) and promotes inquiry of a subject
- does not yield a single straightforward answer (as a leading question does) but produces different plausible responses
- can be either overarching (very broad) or topical (unit specific) in scope
Consider the following questions:
- What is a true friend?
- To what extent does art reflect culture and shape it?
- Is everything quantifiable?
- To what extent is U.S. history a history of progress?
- Must heroes be flawless?
These are questions that are not answerable with finality in a brief sentence – and that’s the point. Their aim is to:
1) stimulate thought (about previously learned material)
2) provoke inquiry
3) to spark more questions (including hopefully thoughtful student questions)
They are board and full of transfer possibilities. Transfer is the goal.
A question is essential if it is meant to:
1) Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the 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, and prior lessons.
5) Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences.
6) Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.
In short, the best questions serve not only to promote understanding of the content of a unit on a particular topic; they also spark connections and promote transfer of ideas from one setting to others.
Essential Questions can be framed around 4 categories of big ideas relevant to effective skill learning:
1) Key concepts
“How do you know that you comprehend what you are reading?”
2) Purpose and value
“Why should readers regularly monitor their comprehension?”
3) Strategy and Tactics
“What do good readers do when they don’t understand the text?”
4) Context of Use
“When should we use ______strategies in our reading?”
Tips for Generating Essential Questions
- Think Jeopardy. Think of what you want them to know (enduring understanding) and make a question from that (essential question)
- Think topical essential questions (specific to a certain topic) then expand it to get broader and broader in scope
- Derive essential questions from national or state content standards
- Use the Six Facets of Understanding as a framework for generating questions
- How many do you need? Think of a variation of the Marine Corps slogan: “We are looking for a few good questions”