In the education system today, the set of standards that teachers need to meet have become so wide that it is impossible to make sure each benchmark and standard gets met. Because of this, teachers are scratching the surface of what students really need to learn, making the education students are receiving less engaging and meaningful. Chapters 3 and 7 in this weeks reading talk about the use of essential questions to help make these standards fit into more compact groups, and allow students to be challenged with more meaningful and engaging learning.
The strategy starts by learning the building backwards method, which begins by identifying the desired result, determining acceptable evidence, and planning learning experiences and instruction to meet these results. By breaking these apart, teachers are able to spread out the small standards and make them into bigger ideas, while taking standards with to large of expectations and condensing them.
For secondary education teachers, this is extremely effective for us because of the stage of learning our students are in. I believe that most of us have the goal to at least have students think about going to college when they finish their K-12 education, and by having these questions, it can help change the dynamic of what we teach and how we teach. Because of trying to prepare our kids for college, we are forced to cover a large amount of material without really going into what it means. With these essential questions though, we can break down some of that large amount of ground we need to cover and categorize it into groups and teach students the ability to break these questions apart to find understandings in them. This helps us be able to focus on certain topical areas long, and get more out of the material, instead of just skimming the surface.
In my experience with curriculum and lesson design in History 320, by learning how to use essential questions it made designing the overall curriculum less stressful because I was able to focus on what to teach in a larger aspect, instead of trying to cover everything. In my opinion, essential questions allow us to condense those standards that everyone dreads so much and tackle them in a way which is effective not only for us to teach, but for the students to learn.
Michael, you are right! The essential questions are excellent tools to start building quality knowledge versus quantity knowledge on our students. In foreign language studies one of our goals is to empower students with the knowledge necessary to be able to successfully and accurately communicate in all social contexts with native speakers of the language. College readiness should always be a goal and can be implemented in every activity. Like you said, it is vital to initiate students’ curiosity about what they will do in the future with their education and to have them start thinking about their higher education options.
ReplyDeleteHey Brack!
ReplyDeleteImportant ideas were definitely raised in the chapters we read for this week. Having essential questions can help us figure out how to begin the daunting task of creating unit and lesson plans. It also helps us put something substantial to the standards we have to work with. Everyone has a different reason for why they want to teach, but I think we can all agree that wanting to help further our students' education is something that we hold to high value. With the help of essential questions, I think we can see more student engagement in the classroom.
In English studies and Literature these questions become even more important. There is far too much literature to read and comprehend to read all of it especially in one year. It becomes even more important for us to understand what exactly we want our students to get out of taking our class. Not every class can be titled British Literature or Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets and so we need to ask these big questions and try to get the best out of our students and teach them how to interact with the literature and the world around them.
ReplyDeleteThis post really hits home! I mean truly, What’s Worth While? We see our education system today drive this notion of 21st century standards to students who must acquire 21st century jobs? While millions of “high tech” jobs are being outsourced we still want a strong focus on STEM degrees? Aside from that, teachers today are in a dilemma across the nation by trying to teach students material that is irrelevant to the majority of the population. A very small population of students will actually find interest in this notion and be driven only on the basis of others controlling what must be taught in schools. Alright, enough of my side rant of what standards should be relevant, now what can we do as teachers to really make an impact on students. We have a clear distinction to teach certain standards. Now the question is, what can we do with these standards? I like the way you use the emphasis of essential questions to promote higher learning and in return still cover the standards that must be learned. I hope that as future educators we can take what we MUST teach and use that to provide a structure where what they MUST learn is something that will be in the process of their higher thinking. For example, how great would it be to have a student who can understand science and apply how that specific theory determined played a role into the colonial construction of Latin America? This does not confine a student to only learning what must be taught, but also promoting a higher level of intellectual thinking.
ReplyDeleteJust like Rosa mentioned that essential questions are important, and I also agree with that because they serve different purposes. They make whether it is a unit or another larger aspect easier. It is mentioned in Ch. 7 that essential questions help with clarifying a topic that students might have a harder time understanding or not have knowledge about. Also, those questions could be used throughout the unit in order to see how much students have comprehended so far (informal assessment), and last a great tool that could be used to see the growth over time that students have acquired. I have used those essential questions when I created different units, but at times those questions could be hard to create in such way that they “uncover” the content and at the same time comprehensible for students in the sense that they are clear and seem logical to students.
ReplyDeleteHello Mike, I agree that the use of essential questions helps us as teachers get into depth on our subject matter as opposed to just skimming the surface. How do students learn if they can not understand what we are teaching. Essential questions provide us with a platform in which to teach for understanding, especially since we can never teach all of the standards that the chapters outlined. The one chapter said there are 3,968 benchmarks to be met at either the state or the federal level.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that it is necessary to ask the types of questions that the chapters talk about when we begin a unit. I agree with you Michael when you say that it will be helpful for us as teachers and for the students as well. I agreed with a point made in Chapter 7 that said questions posed for comprehension and deeper understanding of the content should be open ended rather than leading to a "prescribed answer." This makes sure that all students are able to make sense of the content taking into consideration their differences in background knowledge and skill level. Essential questions allow students to have a deeper understanding of the content and gives everyone a chance to respond to them.
ReplyDeleteHey Michael-
ReplyDeleteI completely with you about the guiding questions/stages and the standards. Having central questions which apply to the standards we are expected to hit allows for so much more clarity. Reading the standards over is a strenuous and frustrating act for me. They are so ambiguous and easily overlap and seem like absolute professional jargon. Developing central questions for the unit allows me to understand exactly what it is students will be able to do, what they will learn or understand, and how to go about doing so. It also makes me think about why I am deciding on a certain topic, because I'm not just looking at the standard and doing something because the standards say I have to.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of essential questions. I think they are good aides/guides for creating a lesson plan. Also, I find the backwards design model very interesting. When I first heard of this model about two year ago, I did not like it-and it didn’t quite make sense to me. Now, however, I think it is genius. Why wouldn’t you start with what you want kids to get out of a lesson? If an idea you have has no purpose, what benefit will it give to the student? I agree that a lot of times, teachers become obsessed with “activity-oriented” instruction and don’t keep in mind that our students need to be learning towards an objective goal-not just aimlessly (37). The book calls the other mistake teachers make when planning and teaching “coverage” (37). Most of my high school teachers were guilty of “coverage.” The backwards design model, I feel, helps teachers stray from both of these because it reminds us to think, first and foremost, about the needs of those we are teaching.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I totally agree with you! Essential questions can be an effective method in order to convey larger ideas in more manageable amounts. The real question can be what is essential? Yes, we want our students to consider college as a serious option after high school, but it rarely occurs with such a low level of interest and engagement in the traditional "necessary" college knowledge we must convey. The trick then becomes relating this material across subjects, across cultures, and to the student while hitting all the standards.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteGreat first post and I totally agree with your statements about breaking down the standards into meaningful and "teachable" amounts for the students to handle. Concerning Lenny's comment, at least in general for humanities, understanding larger overarching themes and general thrends as well as teaching to think about different perspectives about a given topic would be the "essentials". For math or science, the essentials besides the ability to perform basic math skills, the ability to approach any scientific or mathematical problem and to pull in their previous knowledge to solve a particular problem would be the "essentials" that would need to be taught. The general need is to have students to take the skills that were taught and to apply them to the world around them, thus the essentials should be those that would be applicable. What do you think?
Without repeating what everyone already said about essential questions and their ability to help guide lesson plans, I want to focus more on the goals of education in the context of the “how” and the “what” we teach. Michael, you brought up a point of saying that “most of us have the goal to at least have students think about going to college when they finish their K-12 education,” and that got me thinking if that was my goal as well, and I don’t think that it is. By propagating this idea that college is the only correct choice after graduation, I think we marginalize and diddle our students out of fantastic career opportunities that exist outside the white-collar realm of industry. I can only speak for the language arts, but teaching students the five paragraph essay will not foster their urge for learning and discovery, instead, it might actually have the opposite effect by exposing their insecurities and instilling them with a sense of hopelessness. Don’t get me wrong, I find my college education invaluable, but I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had been a carpenter instead.
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