Understanding by Design Training Module #2

1. Understanding by DesignTraining Module #2 Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding

2. Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding • This training module is based on the works of Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins’ Understanding by Design. • This module was built by AISD to support Understanding by Design concepts in the classroom. • AISD Curriculum documents such as Yearly Itineraries and Curriculum Road Maps are written in the UbD Framework Design. • At the end of the training, you will need to complete an Online Assessment to get credit for completing the module.

3. Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding • Goals for this module: • Understand what a “Big Idea” is. • Understand how Essential Questions reflect key questions, focus the learning unit, and prioritize learning. • Recognize what an understanding is.

4. Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding Big Ideas

5. Big Ideas • What is a Big Idea? • A tool for getting more specific understandings • Makes sense of isolated facts • Helps students see connections between facts • A theme • An idea that causes students think, question, and explore • Acts like a lens helping to see content clearer

6. Big Ideas Move your mouse pointer over the letters to learn more about BIG IDEAS

7. Big Ideas Unifying concepts (the modern “flat” world of interdependence)

8. Big Ideas • Organizing themes (love conquers all)

9. Big Ideas • Key strategies and rules of thumb (turn complex quantities into the more familiar and simple to work with via mathematical equivalences)

10. Big Ideas • Dilemmas (we simplify reality in math and science models – with some loss and possible oversight of important detail)

11. Big Ideas • Striking paradox (poverty amid plenty)

12. Big Ideas • Endless debates or issues (nature versus nurture)

13. Big Ideas • Persistent problems or challenges (global warming) Click to continue

14. Big Ideas • Can you find the “Big Ideas” in this unit? Write them in the box. Move the mouse over the image to view a larger version. Click the image to return to this slide.

15. Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding Essential Questions

16. Essential Questions • What is an Essential Question? • Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions. • Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences. • Stimulate vital ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons. • Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers. • Causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas of the core content. • Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations.

17. Click and Drag the Question to the correct column. Non-Essential Question: Essential Questions: • How does the body turn food into energy? • Why is it important to be healthy? • Why is food important for the human body? • What are the elements of a story? • Why does the future tense matter? • How did (any event) cause (any event) to happen? • How much does grammar matter? • What makes a good story?

18. And here are the answers. How did you do? Non-Essential Question: Essential Questions: • Why is food important for the human body? • Why does the future tense matter? • Why is it important to be healthy? • What makes a good story? • How does the body turn food into energy? • How much does grammar matter? • What are the elements of a story? • How did (any event) cause (any event) to happen?

19. It can be argued Essential Questions • People encounter the question in their daily lives • It has different but acceptable responses • It is worth asking again and again • It makes students reflect and extend their thinking • Can be revisited

20. Essential Questions in the CRM Essential Questions

21. Enduring Understanding

22. Enduring Understanding • What is an Enduring Understanding? • “An understanding [is] the moral of the story, or rather, your unit.” (Wiggins and McTighe 80) • A sentence stating the students’ conclusions about the subject via “The Big Idea.” • Gained through “guided inference” with help from the teacher or another to come to a conclusion. • Specific insight, inference, or conclusion about the Big Idea.

23. Click and move the Enduring Understanding under the correct heading Enduring Understanding Not Enduring Understanding The student will understand… The student will understand that… Statistical analysis and data display often reveal patterns that may not be obvious. True friendship. In a free-market economy, price is a function of supply and demand. The most efficient and effective stroke mechanics in swimming involve pushing the maximum amount of water directly backward. Wind is a force of nature. True friendship is revealed during difficult times, not happy times. The price of long-distance phone calls has declined during the past decade.

24. And the answers are?How did you do? Enduring Understanding Not Enduring Understanding The student will understand… The student will understand that… Statistical analysis and data display often reveal patterns that may not be obvious. The price of long-distance phone calls has declined during the past decade. True friendship. True friendship is revealed during difficult times, not happy times. Wind is a force of nature. In a free-market economy, price is a function of supply and demand. The most efficient and effective stroke mechanics in swimming involve pushing the maximum amount of water directly backward.

25. Enduring Understanding • Is this an Understanding? • I want students to understand the Civil War.

26. Essential Questions & Enduring Understanding Enduring Understanding Essential Questions

27. References Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units. Alexandria: ASCD, 2011. Print.