Transcript Why Essential Questions?

Curriculum-Framing
Questions
What Are Curriculum-Framing Questions?
How Do They Help Teachers?
How Do They Help Students?
© 2004 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Rev. 9/13/01
What are CurriculumFraming Questions?
Curriculum-Framing Questions guide a unit of study
and include Essential, Unit, and Content Questions
Essential and Unit Questions:
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Reflect conceptual priorities
Go to the heart of the discipline
Raise important questions across content areas
Have no single, obvious “right” answer
Are framed to provoke student interest
Content Questions
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Directly support content standards and learning objectives
Have specific “right” answers
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What is the difference between
Essential and Unit Questions?
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Essential Questions:
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Are broad in scope
Provide bridges between disciplines and units of study
Example: How does conflict produce change?
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Unit Questions:
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Are tied to a specific topic or unit of study
Support and continue the study of an Essential Question
Examples: How does stress on the environment impact evolution?
In the story, Charlotte’s Web, how do the animals’
different abilities help Wilbur survive and succeed?
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Why Use Curriculum-Framing
Questions?
To target higher order thinking skills
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To require comparison, synthesis, interpretation, evaluation, etc.
To ensure student projects are compelling and
engaging
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To require more than a simple restatement of facts
To focus on important topics
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To connect learning to other disciplines and other topics of study
To ask questions that have been asked throughout human history
To address compelling questions that students ask
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What are Content Questions?
Content Questions differ from Unit and Essential
Questions:
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Content Questions deal mostly with facts, rather than the
interpretation of those facts
They typically have clear-cut answers
Examples:
How are volcanoes made?
What is photosynthesis?
Why is it cold in the winter when the sun is shining?
How do you find the values of unknowns in equations?
What is a fable?
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How Do Essential Questions
Help Teachers?
They help teachers focus on important topics in
their year-long curriculum and bring meaning
across subject areas:
• They raise important questions across content areas
(Maths, Science, Literature, History, etc.).
• They centre around major issues, problems, concerns,
interests, or themes that also occur in other units.
Click here to see a video clip
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How Do Essential Questions
Help Students?
They help to engage students:
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Essential Questions bring meaning and focus to the
study of events and topics throughout a project or
course, which otherwise may seem arbitrary or
unrelated.
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They help students compare, contrast, and make
analogies.
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Questions are relevant, compelling, interesting, and are
written in age-appropriate, student language.
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How Do Essential Questions
Help Students?
They help to engage students:
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They engage students’ imagination and connect the
subject with their own experiences and ideas.
There is no one, obvious “right” answer, so students are
challenged to explore many possibilities.
They encourage in-depth discussion and research, and
set the stage for further questioning.
Click here to see a video clip
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What is the difference between an Essential
Question and a Content Question?
Essential Questions
vs
Fact-based, “One” Answer
Content Questions
How does art reflect culture or
change it?
What is renaissance art?
How does an organism succeed
in its environment?
What is the life cycle of a frog?
How does conflict produce
change?
What is the conflict in the story…?
Why do laws change?
How are laws made?
Is history a history of progress?
Who is an important inventor and
what did he/she invent?
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Click here to see how a team of teachers
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can use one Essential Question
How do Unit Questions Support
Essential Questions?
Essential Question
&
Unit Questions
How can maths help me
understand the world around me?
Why have stories always been
important throughout history?
What are fractals good for?
How does art reflect or change
society?
How does impressionist art reflect life
in the late 1800’s?
How does your own art reflect your life
and culture?
What does it take to change the
world?
How did Federation affect Australia in
the early 1900s?
How does Federation affect the lives of
Australians today?
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Why do we still read Shakespeare?
How is Shakespeare’s work relevant to
my life?
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How are Essential and Unit Questions
Related to Curriculum Frameworks?
Upper Primary Students will know features of Earth’s surface and
– Lower
major geologic events.
Secondary
Sample
outcome
Students will demonstrate and explain how volcanoes
and different types of mountains result from plate
motions.
Essential
Question
How does the earth change?
Unit Question
Could a volcano erupt in my backyard?
Content
Question
How are mountains made?
What are the different layers of the earth?
How do igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks
form?
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Click here to see another sample
Practicing with Questions
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Open the "Brainstorming Questions" document
from the Module 1, Activity 4 folder on the
Program CD-ROM.
Brainstorm with one or two people to complete the
first set of Essential, Unit, and Content Questions.
Share and discuss the questions with the whole
group.
In your small group, pick any other two to three
sets of questions and fill in the blanks with your
own questions.
Share your ideas with one other group.
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Brainstorming Your Own
Questions – Hints & Tips
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When brainstorming Essential Questions:
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Just start…don’t worry about the mechanics and language. Focus
on brainstorming.
Determine what you want your students to remember from this
Unit in five years.
You may want to write your question as a statement first, and then
revise it into a question.
If needed, write the questions in adult language to capture the
essential understandings, then rewrite in “kid” language.
When brainstorming Unit Questions:
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Think about the questions your students ask each time you teach
this unit, and focus on what they find most fascinating.
Be sure that even your Unit Questions have more than one
obvious “right” answer — to target higher order thinking skills
Keep asking the question students ask: “So what?”
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Brainstorming Your Own
Questions – Hints & Tips
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After your brainstorming, share your questions
with several colleagues and gather other ideas
for revising your questions.
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Continue to revisit and improve questions
throughout the creation of your Unit Portfolio.
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The Essential Question for the
Intel® Teach to the Future Program
How can ICT be used
as a tool for learning
and not an end in itself?
Click here to
return to “Tips”
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