Essential Questions

Essential Questions
Author: Jay McTighe
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013-03-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416615709

What are "essential questions," and how do they differ from other kinds of questions? What's so great about them? Why should you design and use essential questions in your classroom? Essential questions (EQs) help target standards as you organize curriculum content into coherent units that yield focused and thoughtful learning. In the classroom, EQs are used to stimulate students' discussions and promote a deeper understanding of the content. Whether you are an Understanding by Design (UbD) devotee or are searching for ways to address standards—local or Common Core State Standards—in an engaging way, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins provide practical guidance on how to design, initiate, and embed inquiry-based teaching and learning in your classroom. Offering dozens of examples, the authors explore the usefulness of EQs in all K-12 content areas, including skill-based areas such as math, PE, language instruction, and arts education. As an important element of their backward design approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the authors *Give a comprehensive explanation of why EQs are so important; *Explore seven defining characteristics of EQs; *Distinguish between topical and overarching questions and their uses; *Outline the rationale for using EQs as the focal point in creating units of study; and *Show how to create effective EQs, working from sources including standards, desired understandings, and student misconceptions. Using essential questions can be challenging—for both teachers and students—and this book provides guidance through practical and proven processes, as well as suggested "response strategies" to encourage student engagement. Finally, you will learn how to create a culture of inquiry so that all members of the educational community—students, teachers, and administrators—benefit from the increased rigor and deepened understanding that emerge when essential questions become a guiding force for learners of all ages.

Wait, What?

Wait, What?
Author: James E. Ryan
Publisher: HarperOne
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 9780062664570

New York Times Bestseller “What, What? is a welcome—and joyful—reminder that true wisdom comes from asking the right questions. Should you read this book? Absolutely.” —Clayton Christensen, bestselling author of How Will You Measure Your Life? Based on the wildly popular commencement address, the art of asking (and answering) good questions by the Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Whether we’re in the boardroom or the classroom, we spend far too much time and energy looking for the right answer. But the truth is that questions are just as important as answers, often more so. If you ask the wrong question, for instance, you’re guaranteed to get the wrong answer. A good question, on the other hand, inspires a good answer and, in the process, invites deeper understanding and more meaningful connections between people. Asking a good question requires us to move beyond what we think we know about an issue or a person to explore the difficult and the unknown, the awkward, and even the unpleasant. In Wait, What?, Jim Ryan, dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, celebrates the art of asking—and answering—good questions. Five questions in particular: Wait, what?; I wonder…? Couldn’t we at least…?; How can I help?; and What truly matters? Using examples from politics, history, popular culture, and social movements, as well as his own personal life, Ryan demonstrates how these essential inquiries generate understanding, spark curiosity, initiate progress, fortify relationships, and draw our attention to the important things in life—from the Supreme Court to Fenway Park. By regularly asking these five essential questions, Ryan promises, we will be better able to answer life’s most important question: “And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?” At once hilarious and illuminating, poignant and surprising, Wait, What? is an inspiring book of wisdom that will forever change the way you think about questions.

Learning Personalized

Learning Personalized
Author: Allison Zmuda
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2015-02-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1118904818

A real-world action plan for educators to create personalized learning experiences Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom provides teachers, administrators, and educational leaders with a clear and practical guide to personalized learning. Written by respected teachers and leading educational consultants Allison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman, this comprehensive resource explores what personalized learning looks like, how it changes the roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder, and why it inspires innovation. The authors explain that, in order to create highly effective personalized learning experiences, a new instructional design is required that is based loosely on the traditional model of apprenticeship: learning by doing. Learning Personalized challenges educators to rethink the fundamental principles of schooling that honors students' natural willingness to play, problem solve, fail, re-imagine, and share. This groundbreaking resource: Explores the elements of personalized learning and offers a framework to achieve it Provides a roadmap for enrolling relevant stakeholders to create a personalized learning vision and reimagine new roles and responsibilities Addresses needs and provides guidance specific to the job descriptions of various types of educators, administrators, and other staff This invaluable educational resource explores a simple framework for personalized learning: co-creation, feedback, sharing, and learning that is as powerful for a teacher to re-examine classroom practice as it is for a curriculum director to reexamine the structure of courses.

Understanding by Design

Understanding by Design
Author: Grant P. Wiggins
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416600353

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

Questioning History

Questioning History
Author: Joe Regenbogen
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1622739930

Since the days of the Ancient Greeks, history has been perceived as the academic study of the past. Unfortunately, it has generally been taught as a litany of rigid, boring facts intended to be accepted rather than questioned. This has been reinforced for decades by weighty textbooks that overwhelm the reader with mind-numbing details presented in a chronological sequence. The end result is that students see little relevance of what they learn in history class to the real world, and many simply struggle to stay awake. Compared to other subjects taught at the secondary level, history is frequently judged to be the most boring. This is largely because it is viewed as an intellectually lifeless subject that presents few opportunities for active engagement. Questioning History is a book built around 16 essential questions designed to challenge this common assumption. Each question is broad, open-ended and subject to vigorous debate. By examining the historical background behind each question and by analyzing the ways in which the question can be answered, the reader will come away with a deeper understanding of the past and a new appreciation for history as a cognitively dynamic subject. In addition, by using each chapter as a platform for engaging discussions and Socratic seminars, the reader will be able to refine the decision-making skills necessary for effective citizenship in a democratic society. Depending on the classroom or the setting in which it is being used, Questioning History can either take the place of the more traditional textbook or at least be used as a supplement to make it come more alive. The best way to learn and to appreciate a subject is through active engagement. Questioning History provides a shot of adrenalin to the study of history.

The Essential Questions Handbook

The Essential Questions Handbook
Author: Carolyn McConnell
Publisher: Teaching Resources
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Education, Elementary
ISBN: 9780545305853

Presents hundreds of questions on forty key topics in language arts, math, social studies, and science.

Make Just One Change

Make Just One Change
Author: Dan Rothstein
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 161250454X

The authors of Make Just One Change argue that formulating one’s own questions is “the single most essential skill for learning”—and one that should be taught to all students. They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them. Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

The Essential Question

The Essential Question
Author: Whitney T. Kuniholm
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2014-07-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830836748

What difference am I making with my life? Whitney Kuniholm, president of Scripture Union/USA, addresses this fundamental question through the lens of fifty brief reflections from the book of Acts. The experiences of the first Christians show us that God has an essential mission for all of his people.

Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask

Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask
Author: Deanna P. Dannels
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Classroom management
ISBN: 9780199330997

Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask: A Guidebook for Communicating with Students acknowledges and addresses the essential questions and concerns that emerge for teachers in all stages of development. Using a narrative style that incorporates actual voices of teachers, this book offersreaders relevant research, peer mentoring, communication-focused recommendations, and reflective practice opportunities. This unique resource provides useful strategies for addressing communication questions that emerge in the teacher development process.This book is intended for graduate communication courses and upper division undergraduate communication courses focused on teacher training and development. As such, this book could serve as a stand-alone resource for these courses or it could be a supplement to a longer handbook (given the book isintended to be relatively short by comparison). Additionally, this book could be marketed to teacher training programs and centers that often purchase-in bulk- training materials for new teachers. Generally, the new teachers participating in these courses, programs or centers would likely be MS/MAand PhD level graduate students or lecturers.Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask is uniquely situated to fill a niche that current communication education and instructional communication handbooks do not because of its distinct approach. First, the book is organized around empirically grounded teacher communication concerns that arepressing to new teachers (and those teachers who teach new teachers). Current books are organized topically or contextually around scholarly lines of inquiry that might not speak to the immediate challenges new teachers face. Second, this book uses a framing mechanism-teacher communication concerns- that is relevant and timely for new teachers as the entryway for introducing instructional communication literature. In this way, the book makes the instructional communication research accessible and pertinent to new teachers who might not otherwise find such comprehensive syntheses applicablefor their immediate teacher preparation needs. Finally, this book uses a narrative style to explore, address, and provide recommendations about managing concerns - emulating styles that often characterize mentoring relationships that new teachers seek out when faced with their concerns. In this way,this style and tone of this book speak to new teachers in ways comprehensive syntheses cannot.The five primary objectives of this book include:1. Acknowledging the lived, experienced communication concerns of new teachers2. Providing a foundation of research essentials that speak to teacher communication concerns3. Harnessing the power of peer guidance to provide insight into teacher communication concerns4. Providing concrete, communication-focused recommendations to mitigate teacher communication concerns5. Encouraging reflective practice about teacher communication concerns