Using Essential Questions with Intentionality AND Purpose

When visiting classrooms, teachers are regularly using visual reminders (posters, anchor charts, pulling up digital charts) of the big ideas and essential questions that frame the work within different chunks of a unit. Yet, "merely posting the essential questions and occasionally reminding kids of it is pointless: the aim is to use the question to frame specific activities, to provide perspective, " and to focus on the conceptual ideas that are prioritized for the unit. Most important, essential questions bring the critical thinking and reasoning of students to the forefront of inquiry. After all, essential questions are designed for inquiry...and daily classroom experiences should be designed so students skillfully develop new knowledge and evidence to answer questions with reasonable ideas.

This can be a huge leap, especially in social studies, because of traditions that regularly take over a teacher's approach to social studies instruction.  Sadly, social studies still seems to driven by reading non-fiction text and completing activities that provide a break from learning more facts and masses of information. In contrast, students should be:

• taking time to apply critical thinking skills to analyze and gather the big ideas from multiple sources (charts, graphs, images, maps, primary sources, secondary sources, and visual media),
• asking additional questions due to interaction with sources (even if those questions are not answered),
• using newly learned ideas to engage in discipline-specific critical thinking and reasoning (Look at what students should be able to do. This is discipline-specific thinking/work and allows students to engage in the thinking practices and skills of historians, geographers, economists, and engaged/informed citizens), and
• using newly learned ideas to connect with the big ideas and essential questions (essential questions are designed with students as the audience, and they're designed so students uncover conceptual understandings)

"At every turn, in other words, the essential question looms large in the unit. Students are not only encouraged to keep pondering them" over the course of many days, "but they take notes on the question and routinely remind one another that the essential question is the focus." As a point of self-reflection, ask yourself:

1. Is the teacher the only one who keeps referring to the essential question? Or, do students continually refer to the essential question, indicating that they know it's a tool central to their learning?
2. Does the teacher primarily use an essential question so students can point out "answers"? Or, does the teacher use an essential question so students can use what they've learned and also pose additional ideas beyond what they are learning? (Students owning the question is central to a guided release model.)
3. Is the essential question central to assessment?
4. Is there a plan whereby the question goes from the teacher's control to the students' control?

I'm going to steal from Grant Wiggins' blog post, and use his Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions. (For more insights, check out his book Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Students Understanding.) As you read this chart, notice how inquiry with essential questions is supported with design of the unit. Because social studies units frequently contain a mix of complex concepts and skills, consider how you might organize a unit into chunks. Each chunk can address an essential question (or possibly a few related essential questions). To answer that question, students engage with sources and process their learning by using discipline-specific thinking skills AND the essential question(s) that are aligned to conceptual understandings. 

Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions
(Access a blank version of this template to use in planning)

Finally, as you reflect on essential questions that you choose to drive different chunks of a unit, consider the components of a GOOD essential question (from Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins):

• "A GOOD essential question:
• is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, meant to spark discussion and debate.
• calls for higher-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, and prediction. It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone.
• points towards important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across disciplines).
• raises additional questions and sparks further inquiry.
• requires support and justification, not just an answer.
• recurs over time (i.e. the question can and should be re-visited again and again)."

Questions that meet all or most of these criteria qualify as 'essential.' These are questions that are not answerable with finality in a single lesson or brief sentence - and that's the point. Their aim is to stimulate thought, to provoke inquiry, and to spark more questions, including thoughtful student questions, not just pat answers. They are provocative and generative. By tackling such questions, learners are engaged in 'uncovering' the depth and richness of a topic that might otherwise be obscured by simply 'covering' it." 

** I want to note that significant facets of this post (identified within quotes) come from a post by Grant Wiggins, "On genuine vs bogus inquiry - using EQs properly."

Using Concept-Based Charts to Focus on Conceptual Goals

While my previous post looked at students using facts skillfully based on what students should be able to do, we must also be supporting students in their development of conceptual ideas.  (Jeffco teachers will notice that report cards elevate these two descriptors as 1) demonstrates understanding of social studies concepts and content and 2) applies skills and processes of social studies effectively...see the blog post that digs into those descriptors.)

Conceptually speaking, every content area has its most significant concepts.  The most significant concepts of a content can be seen as big ideas or as organizing concepts.  In addition, essential questions are written so students apply inquiry to uncover what we want students to understand.

As a classroom tool, teachers might consider creating a chart that communicates all of the concepts for a unit.  The essential questions can be used to help students and teachers stay focused on the unit's conceptual goals, while the words and phrases (big ideas and organizing concepts) can be included to help students and teachers discuss and use the conceptual language of history, geography, economics, and civics. If we build expectations around the regular use of academic vocabulary, then students will eventually view the use of academic vocabulary as the norm.

Some of you might be interested in looking at the framework for Preschool-12th grade Social Studies. This 

For teachers interested in viewing examples of the social studies concept-based classroom charts by grade level, access the appropriate grade level document.

• 3rd grade Social Studies Concept-Based Charts (by unit)
• 4th grade Social Studies Concept-Based Charts (by unit)
• 5th grade Social Studies Concept-Based Charts (by unit)
• 6th grade Social Studies Concept-Based Charts (by unit)

    

Connecting Facts/Details to Concepts in Changing Face of North America

This week, I had an excellent conversation with teachers about the unit Changing Face of North America: Emergence of a New World Society.  In this unit, it's easy for teachers to think that lots of content information is important.  As we look at concept-based instruction, one thing we have to remember as teachers is...more information does not necessarily equate to smarter students.  Concept-based instruction involves helping students to connect the facts they learn to the broader, more enduring concepts.  In turn, we asked this question. "How do we support students in connecting facts/details to concepts?"  For teachers who use a notebook or graphic organizers to help students track their conceptual understanding, we discussed how students would come back often to these notebook pages or graphic organizers as they learn more factual information and work to connect these facts to different conceptual lenses.

The use of essential questions is connected to inquiry (and to concept-based instruction).  As students learn more information, they can approach each essential question with greater complexity.  Essential questions are written with students as the audience while their corresponding understandings are written with teachers as the audience. 

Last, when teachers look at the Stage 1 Desired Results for a unit of study, there are content specific words and phrases that can also be used by teachers and students in classroom conversations (and writing).  These words and phrases are Big Ideas or Organizing Concepts.  In this unit, these words and phrases are connected to history and geography.  Teachers might consider how to weave this vocabulary and these ideas into classroom discussion (and writing) knowing that these big ideas and organizing concepts continue to appear for students from preschool through 12th grade.  

As we move ahead in our learning about concept-based instruction,  explore how students might use a notebook or graphic organizers to connect student learning to the unit's concepts (essential questions, big ideas, and organizing concepts).  These connections help students to make sense of their learning so the unit is not about a string of facts; the unit is about broader concepts and students have the opportunity to connect the facts/details to the broader concepts.

Uncovering Conceptual Ideas by Connecting Learning Activities to Essential Questions

     Concept-based instruction involves a paradigm shift for educators.  Lynn Erickson, author of Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom (2007), offers a crucial philosophical foundation of concept-based instruction.


"The paradigm shift, to shape the conceptual mind, requires teaching inductively to the concepts...using the topics and facts as a supporting tool rather than a final destination.  There are two important points to this statement. 1) Teaching inductively means that students are guided to understanding concepts.... The (concepts) are not generally taught directly as facts because this robs the student of the opportunity to think things through to deeper levels of understanding."  (p. 34)

I like to think of it this way.  When I receive a news headline update on my phone, I begin down the road towards understanding the story.  When I read an article about the story, I understand the story a little more. When I watch a tv segment about the story, I understand the story even more. When I read editorial pieces sharing broader perspectives about the event, my understanding continues to expand.  Over time, my understanding of the story continues to grow, each experience (news headline, article, tv segment, and editorials) allow me to slowly uncover a richer understanding of the story.

When considering the desired results within curriculum, we might begin by looking at the conceptual ideas that we want students to understand.  To complement these understandings, teachers are given essential questions, which are written for students and can be used to guide the inquiry and thinking of students.  Essential questions are not answered after one classroom experience, their complexity is revealed over time and we might consider how planning a unit of study incorporates the opportunity for students to revisit an essential questions.

* * * * * * * * * * * 

Consider how this might play out in a 4th grade economic unit on Choices and Opportunity Cost (Economics).

1. Essential Questions: "How do people make thoughtful decisions?"  and "How do you know when you've made a good decision? How do you know when you've made a bad decision?"  (When students answer these questions at the start of the unit, they'll bring their background knowledge and reveal what they understand about these ideas.  This gives good information to the teacher to inform instruction.)
2.  Learning Activites: Teacher engage students in learning about choices (daily and financial choices).  Students also learn about opportunity cost.  When students have a variety of choices about what to do with their free time, they make a choice. The next best alternative that is given up is the opportunity cost.
3. Revisit the essential questions.  A teacher might say, "Based on what you've learned about opportunity cost, what other thinking can you include in your answer to the essential questions?"
4.  Learning Activities: Teachers engage students in learning about risks associated with choices (daily and financial choices).  As people make choices, adding the variable of risk helps students sense that this can also influence a decision.
5. Revisit the essential questions.  A teacher might say, "Based on what you've learned about risk, what other thinking can you include in your answer to the essential questions?"
6.  Learning Activities: Teachers engage students in learning about positive and negative incentives associated with daily choices and financial choices.
7. Revisit the essential questions.  A teacher might say, "Based on what you've learned about positive and negative incentives, what other thinking can you include in your answer to the essential questions?"

* * * * * * * * * * * 

In this example, student learning does not stop with facts.  Student learning goes deeper as students continue to connect facts back to broader conceptual ideas.  In doing so, students revisit essential questions to uncover a concept over time, just as a news story reveals its depth and complexity over time. To me, this is one way to take the philosophy of concept-based instruction and implement its ideas into instructional practice.  


How do you see concept-based instruction playing out in your classroom?

Blogging and Its Connection to "Writing to Learn"

Best practice instruction includes giving students the opportunity to reflect on their learning, clarify thinking, or make connections among different ideas through writing.  This is the process of writing to learn.  It may happen through students reflecting on essential questions, connecting discrete details of learning to their more significant concepts, or even just in considering what makes sense and what is confusing within the skills, processes and content of social studies.  Writing to learn elevates metacognition, the process of thinking about your own thinking.  As more teachers begin to use 21st century tools, blogging is something that students can do.  In terms of assigning relevant, worthwhile homework, student-created blogs seem to make sense.  And, if student blogs are connected to each other, blogs create opportunities for teachers to support students in their practice of 21st century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation.  This video explains, perfectly, why blogging is so powerful for teachers and students as they mediate thinking.  One place to establish classroom blogs is Edublogs.org.  For additional thinking, see this post from ASCD Edge.