eSSENTIAL QUESTIONS CAN BE...
ProvocativeThese questions have no right or wrong answers.
They should stir debate. They recur over time and across different subject areas. Provocative questions are open-ended and require higher order thinking. These questions are good to gather interest and engagement at the start of a unit of study. And, they're good to use at the end of a unit of study to give practical application of conceptual understanding and procedural skill. They require kids to make justification of their answers, and to make critique of others' answers. When is_______[a particular strategy] most effective? Least effective?
When is the "correct" mathematical answer not the best solution to a problem? What can numbers show better than words? When is sampling better than counting? How accurate (precise) is it? How precise is precise enough? |
conceptualConceptual questions are broader; timeless concept-based questions that are not answered easily.
A student must synthesize multiple facets of understanding to adequately answer essential and supporting questions. These questions transfer in time and space. Conceptual questions are open-ended and require students to make sense of their experiences. These questions add relevance and importance to the concepts being studied. These are typically used throughout a unit of study to help students make sense and make connections. What is a number system? Which one should we use here?
What is a pattern? How do we find patterns? How do we show patterns? What equivalences will help us simplify this equation and solve this problem? How do we best show (represent) multi-dimensional data? When and why? |
factualSoliciting reasonably simple, straight forward answers based on obvious facts or awareness.
These are locked in time, space or situation. These questions are searching for a single correct answer. These are often asked to verify factual knowledge and procedural skill. What is a unit fraction? When do we need them?
What is the process for dividing fractions? Why is that? What is an even number? What number comes before 371? What number is 10 less than 209? |
Day 2 PowerPoint on Essential Questions
Characteristics of Essential Questions
Essential Questions have no one obvious right answer.
They uncover, rather than cover up a subject’s controversies, puzzles and perspectives.
What is snow?
Why is winter colder than summer?
Essential Questions raise other important questions, often across subject-area boundaries
How does global warming affect all forms of life?
What can be done to decrease CO2 emissions?
Essential Questions address the philosophical or conceptual foundations of a discipline.
They focus the learning of big ideas and core processes in Science.
In nature do only the strong survive?
Essential Questions recur naturally and are important enough to show up in several science units.
What evidence of Patterns of Change is illustrated within…(the Rock Cycle, Seasons, Adaptation)?
What is the relationship of Form to Function in… (Plants, Animals, Cell Shape, States of Matter)?
Essential Questions are framed to provoke and sustain student interest.
Why/how do we see color?
Essential Questions provide a continuum of learning from broad overarching questions to more specific Unit Questions.
Essential Questions have no one obvious right answer.
They uncover, rather than cover up a subject’s controversies, puzzles and perspectives.
What is snow?
Why is winter colder than summer?
Essential Questions raise other important questions, often across subject-area boundaries
How does global warming affect all forms of life?
What can be done to decrease CO2 emissions?
Essential Questions address the philosophical or conceptual foundations of a discipline.
They focus the learning of big ideas and core processes in Science.
In nature do only the strong survive?
Essential Questions recur naturally and are important enough to show up in several science units.
What evidence of Patterns of Change is illustrated within…(the Rock Cycle, Seasons, Adaptation)?
What is the relationship of Form to Function in… (Plants, Animals, Cell Shape, States of Matter)?
Essential Questions are framed to provoke and sustain student interest.
Why/how do we see color?
Essential Questions provide a continuum of learning from broad overarching questions to more specific Unit Questions.
Using essential questions
Once you have written essential questions, it is time to put them into action, consider this Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions
1. Introduce a question designed to cause inquiry.
Ensure that the EQ is thought-provoking, relevant to both students and the current unit/course content, and explorable via a text/research/project/lab/problem/issue/simulation in which the question comes to life.
For example, How can recognizing patterns help us be efficient in problem solving, and help us understand better?
2. Elicit varied responses and question those responses.
Use questioning techniques and protocols as necessary to elicit the widest possible array of different plausible, yet imperfect answers to the question. Also, probe the original question in light of the different takes on it that are implied in the varied student answers and due to inherent ambiguity in the words of the question.
For example, Students generate a few ideas at the start of class. Teacher may probe to make connections to prior tasks and pattern recognition already done.
3. Introduce and explore new perspective(s)
Bring new text/data/phenomena to the inquiry, designed to deliberately extend inquiry and/or call into question tentative conclusions reached thus far. Elicit and compare new answers to previous answers, looking for possible connections and inconsistencies to probe.
Students are grouped according to teacher’s informal knowledge of students past ease at recognizing patterns.
A rich task is posed in which recognition of pattern will help solve the problem more efficiently and will lead to generalizations about applying such patterns.
For example, Counting Embedded Figures (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=978) Or Rediscovering the Patterns in Pick’s Theorem (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2083) Or More Trains (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2708)
4. Reach tentative closure.
Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (and/or newly raised) questions about both content and process.
For example, Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (or newly raised) questions about the use of recognizing patterns in addition to the questions asked in making the lesson’s generalizations public.
1. Introduce a question designed to cause inquiry.
Ensure that the EQ is thought-provoking, relevant to both students and the current unit/course content, and explorable via a text/research/project/lab/problem/issue/simulation in which the question comes to life.
For example, How can recognizing patterns help us be efficient in problem solving, and help us understand better?
2. Elicit varied responses and question those responses.
Use questioning techniques and protocols as necessary to elicit the widest possible array of different plausible, yet imperfect answers to the question. Also, probe the original question in light of the different takes on it that are implied in the varied student answers and due to inherent ambiguity in the words of the question.
For example, Students generate a few ideas at the start of class. Teacher may probe to make connections to prior tasks and pattern recognition already done.
3. Introduce and explore new perspective(s)
Bring new text/data/phenomena to the inquiry, designed to deliberately extend inquiry and/or call into question tentative conclusions reached thus far. Elicit and compare new answers to previous answers, looking for possible connections and inconsistencies to probe.
Students are grouped according to teacher’s informal knowledge of students past ease at recognizing patterns.
A rich task is posed in which recognition of pattern will help solve the problem more efficiently and will lead to generalizations about applying such patterns.
For example, Counting Embedded Figures (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=978) Or Rediscovering the Patterns in Pick’s Theorem (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2083) Or More Trains (http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2708)
4. Reach tentative closure.
Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (and/or newly raised) questions about both content and process.
For example, Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (or newly raised) questions about the use of recognizing patterns in addition to the questions asked in making the lesson’s generalizations public.
SOME EXAMPLES
Examples that lend themselves to help frame a unit and can be used repeatedly during the unit and readdressed as the learning progresses. The following examples are considered these types and are called Overarching.
Examples that lend themselves to help frame a unit and can be used repeatedly during the unit and readdressed as the learning progresses. The following examples are considered these types and are called Overarching.
- How is mathematics used to quantify and compare situations, events, and phenomena?
- What are the mathematical attributes of objects or processes, and how are they measured or calculated?
- How are spatial relationships, including shape and dimension, used to draw, construct, model, and represent real situations or solve problems?
- How is mathematics used to measure, model, and calculate change?
- What are the patterns in the information we collect, and how are they useful?
- How can mathematics be used to provide models that help us interpret data and make predictions?
- In what ways can data be expressed so that their accurate meaning is concisely presented to a specific audience?
- How do the graphs of mathematical models and data help us better understand the world in which we live?
- What do effective problem solvers do, and what do they do when they get stuck?