UbD Enduring Understandings & Essential Questions Stage 1

Dr. Robert Mayes University of Wyoming Science and Mathematics Teaching Center [email protected]

Caution: Assessing for understanding is not as easy as it appears  Minds of Our Own  Thin Air  http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html

Evidence of Understanding

 Think like an assessor  Conventional Design  Stage 1 Stage 3 Stage 2  Assessor (Backward) Design  Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3  Stage 1: Desired results – enduring idea  Stage 2: Evidence – assessment tasks  Stage 3: Learning Plan - activity

Stage 1: Desired Results – 4 categories

 Established Goals (G)  National, state, local, professional standards, program objectives, learner outcomes  Enduring Understandings (U)  What we want students to come to understand about the big ideas  Essential Questions (Q)  Open-ended provocative questions designed to guide student inquiry and focus on uncovering big ideas  Knowledge and Skills (KS)  Discrete objectives students are to know and be able to do

Desired Results

 Design Elements Overview – Handout (GUQKS)  Structure of Knowledge – Activity (KSU)

Identifying Enduring Understandings (Activity – KSU)

 Background: field of possible content, topics, skills and resources  Cannot address all so obligated to make choices Worth being familiar with Important to know and do Enduring Understanding

Identifying Enduring Understandings

 Worth Being Familiar With (Largest Ring)  Expose to broad brush knowledge but do not require mastery  Assess through quizzes and tests

Identifying Enduring Understandings

 Important to Know and Do (Middle Ring)  Important knowledge: facts, concepts and principles  Important skills: processes, strategies and methods  Mastery by students is prerequisite for success in accomplishing key performances (understanding)  Enduring Understanding (Smallest Ring)  Anchor unit and establish rationale for it  Big Ideas – Why is this worth studying?

 Assessed by Performance

Essential Questions

 Staying focused on enduring understandings is accomplished by:  Framing goals in terms of essential questions  Specifying the desired understandings  Specifying key performance tasks  Write-out: What is an essential question?

 Students take turns providing their interpretation of the above question from reading Chapter 5 by writing a word or phase on the board. Students cannot talk, but they can write responses to other students’ input.

Essential Questions

 Provocative questions and big ideas lead to engaging students in inquiry, uncovering ideas, and developing understanding  Avoids activity-orientation or coverage orientation of teaching  Standards make mistake of framing core content as factlike sentences rather than revealing them to be summary insights derived from questions and inquires

Essential Question Characteristics

 Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into big ideas and core content  Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding; lead to new questions  Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify answers  Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons  Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences  Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects

Essential Questions - different levels of specificity

 Overarching: more abstract or general understandings that are transferable, broader in scope so involve generalizations that transcend the unit forming bridges to other units and courses  Topical: topic specific insights, generalizations derived from the specific content knowledge and skills of the unit

Essential Questions - 4 types

Intent Guiding (closed) Open Scope

Topical Overarching Unit specific questions, converge toward settled understanding General questions, cut across unit/subject but still converge to desired understanding Stimulate inquiry and deepen understanding of important ideas within a unit, do not converge to settled understanding Broad and deep questions that remain open in the discipline, cut across unit/subject boundaries Need overarching to ensure transfer Need topical to avoid aimless drifting discussions Need open questions to promote intellectual freedom and questioning authority

Creating Essential Questions

 Convert declarative statements to questions - Jeopardy Approach  Standards - declarative to interrogative  Enduring ideas  Use 6 facets of understanding to generate questions

6 Facets of Understanding

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Explanation Interpretation Application Perspective Empathy Self-Knowledge

Insight vs. Performance

Conundrum of Insight vs. Performance  Performance Ability: revealed in Explain, Interpret, and Apply Facets of Understanding  Insight: revealed in Perspective, Empathy, and Self-knowledge facets of Understanding  Insight – basis of discovery: perceive essence of problem, but may have difficulty articulating it  Performance - articulation and accuracy of formalized knowledge is often overvalued by assessor  Communication of idea, clarity, and justification are part of understanding

Essential Questions from Skills

 Important understandings are often implicit or embedded in skill development  High level use of skill involves innovation, judgment, and efficiency  Genuine Performance requires making choices from repertoire of skills to solve challenging problems  To be skillful is to work purposefully and strategically, requires understanding of key principles at work

Filter for Essential Questions & Enduring Understandings

 To what extent are the outcome statements:  enduring and transferable big ideas, having value beyond the classroom? (intellectual linchpin)  big ideas and core processes at the heart of the discipline? (authentic learning, active constructor)  abstract, counterintuitive, often misunderstood, require uncovering?  big ideas embedded in facts, skills, and activities?

 Activity: EQ and EU Sieve (QU)  Activity: Drafting Essential Questions (Q)

Dr. Robert Mayes University of Wyoming Science and Mathematics Teaching Center [email protected]