What is a Big Idea?

1. What is a Big Idea? • A big idea offers a conceptual framework allowing the learner to explore answers to the essential questions involving a unit of study. -Grant Wiggins • Answer questions like: • Why exactly are we teaching…? • What couldntpeople do if they didn’t understand…? • What do we want students to understand and be able to do 5 years from now?

2. I feel bad because I was always telling him to think big.

3. You want them to see what you see!

4. Clarifying Content Priorities • Content that is worth being familiar with • Content that is important to know and do • “Big Ideas”

5. Why are Big Ideas important? • Student engagement increases • Curriculum ties to other courses and life • Authentic tasks make it real • Students know the reason why they are doing each lesson as it fits into the big picture of the • Essential Questions are generated from Big Ideas and form the basis for our lessons and student learning by linking knowledge and skills to a greater purpose and creating deeper understanding. • Essential questions are worded in language students can understand • Deeper understanding allows students to transfer knowledge and skills to meet new challenges.

6. But… • “What is big to the teacher or the expert in the field is often abstract, lifeless, confusing, or irrelevant to the student. What may be a vital conception to the expert in the field of study may well seem nonsensical, unintelligible, or of little interest to the novice.” p. 75 UbD • “The challenge of teaching for understanding is largely the challenge of making the big ideas in the field become big in the mind of the learner.” p. 75 UbD

7. How does it fit? • Curriculum Documents -unpacking the Overall and Specific Expectations • Big Ideas & Enduring Understandings -Makes you think of Core Tasks (Performance Tasks) & Assessments • Essential Questions • Lesson Learning Goals & Development

8. Revealing the Big Ideas Big ideas are revealed, not identified, through… • Focusing themes or concepts • On-going debate • Insightful perspectives • Finding underlying assumptions • Paradoxes, problems, challenges • Organizing theories • Overarching principles • Provocative questions • Processes in the field; problem-solving, decision-making • By identifying the nouns and verbs in the standards or overall expectations.

9. Criteria…Types of Big Ideas • Concepts…economics…”supply & demand” • Themes…good triumphs over evil • Debates…a winning team is one where offence beats defence; conservative vs. liberal • Perspective…the glass is half full or half empty • Paradox…freedom involves responsibility; poverty amid plenty • Theory…form follows function • Principle…less is more • Assumption…non-fiction text always depicts truth; markets are rational • Authentic problems…voter apathy

10. Big Idea checklist… • Does it have many layers not obvious to the inexperienced learner? Is it an “Umbrella term” • Does one have to dig deep to truly understand its meaning or implications? • Is it prone to disagreement? • Might it change over time? • Does it go to the core of the curriculum? Is it historically important yet, still alive in the field for debate?

11. Big Idea checklist continued… • Is it transferable to new situations and learnings a student will meet in the future? • Is it abstract, not obvious? • Is it counterintuitive? • Is it prone to misconception? 10. Does it allow students to ask and re-ask questions to clarify and uncover the idea as they go through the course?

12. What a Big Idea is not… • A question • A concept or piece of knowledge • A narrow concept • Written as an objective/expectation of students • An activity (e.g. can sort French words into lists of nouns and verbs) • A skill – can light a Bunsen burner