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Muir Middle School

Muir Middle School. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS and ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS. Your Favorite Novel, Song, Painting, and Film. As you know it, what is the essential theme or understanding the author or creator is trying to communicate?

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Muir Middle School

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  1. Muir Middle School • ESSENTIAL • QUESTIONS • and ENDURING • UNDERSTANDINGS

  2. Your Favorite Novel, Song, Painting, and Film • As you know it, what is the essential theme or understanding the author or creator is trying to communicate? • Would this work have an Essential Question? An Enduring Understanding? What is it???!!

  3. BLUE MOON • Essential Question: • How can we find true love? • What is “it” that happens when • we “fall” for someone? • Essential Understanding: • Finding true love is unpredictable and has no formula…although a full moon might help!!!

  4. 1776 by David McCullough • Essential Question: • How is a great leader different than • the average person? • Enduring Understanding: • A great leader may have great strengths, weaknesses, and • incredible luck.

  5. The greatest novels, plays, songs and the greatest paintings all explore Essential Questions. They spark our curiousity. • Essential Questions probe the issues confronting us . . . matters which elude simple answers: • Life - Death - Marriage - Identity - Purpose - Betrayal - Honor - Integrity - Courage - Temptation - Faith - Leadership - Addiction - Invention - Inspiration.

  6. Essential Questions touch our hearts and souls. They are central to our lives. They help to define what it means to be human.Most important thoughts during our lives will center on suchquestions.They may take a life time to answer!What does it mean to be a good friend? Who will I include in my circle of friends? How shall I treat my friends? How do I cope with the loss of a friend? What can I learn about friends and friendships from the novels we read in school?

  7. Some Essential Questions: • Why do we have to fight wars? Do we have to fight wars? • How could political issues or ideas ever become more important than family loyalties? • Some say our country remains wounded by the slavery experience and the Civil War. In what ways might this claim be true and in what ways untrue? What evidence can you supply?

  8. How can countries avoid the kind of bloodshed and devastation we experienced during our Civil War? • How much diversity can any nation tolerate? • Who showed greater bravery and courage, the front line soldiers and the nurses who tended to the wounded and dying or the leaders of the war effort?

  9. More Essential Questions: Does a good read differ from a ‘great book’? Why are some books fads, and others classics? To what extent is geography destiny? Should an axiom be obvious? How different is a scientific theory from a plausible belief? What is the government’s proper role?

  10. You’ve got to go below the surface...

  11. to uncover the really ‘big ideas.’

  12. STANDARD): Unpack the content standards and content, cognitive action, and concept Understandings Essential Questions s t a g e 1 Assessment Evidence Performance T ask(s): Other Evidence: s Analyze multiple sources of evidence t a g e 2 Derive the implied learning Learning Activities s t a g e 3 The “big ideas” of each stage: 3 C’s What are the big ideas? What’s the evidence? How will we get there? Scaffolding Lessons

  13. Filters for Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings • It has value beyond the classroom • It contributes to world citizenship • It has real world applications • It may change over time • It raises more questions • It requires “uncoverage” • It may be arguable, prone to misunderstanding • It requires “doing” • It is engaging, and intriguing • It ‘endures’ a lifetime!

  14. 1. Identify desired results 3. Plan learning experiences & instruction 3 Stages of Design, elaborated 2. Determine acceptable evidence

  15. Stage 1: Identify desired results. • Key: Focus on Big ideas • What content standards are addressed explicitly by the unit? • What essential questions will frame the teaching toward key ideas, and suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into content? • Enduring Understandings: What specific insights about big ideas do we want students to leave with? ………The Moral of the Story! • What should students know and be able to do?

  16. Muir’s Super Social Studies Department: • Standard • Essential Question • Enduring Understanding • Scaffolding/Lessons • Culminating Task

  17. Understandings: examples... U • Great artists often break with conventions to better express what they see and feel. • Price is a function of supply and demand. • Friendships can be deepened or undone by hard times • History is the story told by the “winners” • F = ma (weight is not mass) • Math models simplify physical relations – and even sometimes distort relations – to deepen our understanding of them • The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story

  18. The “big idea” of Stage 1: • There is a clear focus in the unit • on the big ideas • Implications: • Organize content around key concepts • Show how the big ideas offer a purpose and rationale for the student • You will need to “unpack” Content standards in many cases to make the implied big ideas clear

  19. Essential Questions Q • What questions – • are arguable - and important to argue about? • are at the heart of the subject? • recur - and should recur - in professional work, adult life, as well as in classroom inquiry? • raise more questions – provoking and sustaining engaged inquiry? • often raise important conceptual or philosophical issues? • can provide organizing purpose for meaningful & connected learning?

  20. 1. Identify desired results 2. Determine acceptable evidence 3. Plan learning experiences & instruction 3 Stages of Design: Stage 2

  21. Stage 2 – Assessment Evidence • Template fields ask: • What are key complex performance tasks indicative of understanding? • What other evidence will be collected to build the case for understanding, knowledge, and skill? • What rubrics will be used to assess complex performance? T OE R

  22. The big ideafor Stage 2 • The evidence should be credible & helpful. • Implications: the assessments should – • Be grounded in real-world applications, supplemented as needed by more traditional school evidence • Provide useful feedback to the learner, be transparent, and minimize secrecy • Be valid, reliable - aligned with the desired results of Stage 1 (and fair)

  23. Assessment of Understanding via the 6 facets • i.e. You really understand when you can: • explain, connect, systematize, predict it • show its meaning, importance • apply or adapt it to novel situations • see it as one plausible perspective among others, question its assumptions • see it as its author/speaker saw it • avoid and point out common misconceptions, biases, or simplistic views

  24. Scenarios for Authentic Tasks T • Build assessments anchored in authentic tasks using GRASPS: • What is the Goal in the scenario? • What is the Role? • Who is the Audience? • What is your Situation (context)? • What is the Performance challenge? • By what Standards will work be judged in the scenario? G R A S P S

  25. For Reliability & Sufficiency:Use a Variety of Assessments • Varied types, over time: • authentic tasks and projects • academic exam questions, prompts, and problems • quizzes and test items • informal checks for understanding • student self-assessments

  26. 1. Identify desired results 3. Plan learning experiences & instruction 3 Stages of Design: Stage 3 2. Determine acceptable evidence

  27. E F F E C T I V E E N GAGING and Stage 3 big idea:

  28. Stage 3 – Plan Learning Experiences & Instruction • A focus on engagingandeffective learning, “designed in” • What learning experiences and instruction will promote the desired understanding, knowledge and skill of Stage 1? • How will the design ensure that all students are maximally engaged and effective at meeting the goals? L

  29. Think of your obligations via W. H. E. R. E. T. O. L W • “Where are we headed?” (the student’s Q!) • How will the student be ‘hooked’? • What opportunities will there be to be equipped, and to experience and explore key ideas? • What will provide opportunities to rethink, rehearse, refine and revise? • How will students evaluate their work? • How will the work be tailored to individual needs, interests, styles? • How will the work be organized for maximal engagement and effectiveness? H E R E T O

  30. Your Favorite Novel, Song, Painting, and Film • Title: Novel-Song-Painting-Film___________________________ • Would this work have an Essential Question? What is it???!! • As you know it, what is the Enduring Understanding the author or creator is trying to communicate?

  31. Your Favorite Novel, Song, Painting, and Film • Created by • Steven Steinberg • LD7 Social Studies Specialist

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