Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
While standards may direct your curriculum and focus your learning goals, how you teach to those standards-creative teaching- is still up to you. (Heacock, p. 53) having reviewed your standards, content statements, benchmarks, etc., it is time to look critically at what you want to teach. Before planning instruction you must first identify the essential principles and concepts stated in your standards. Formulating essential questions will help you and the students focus on the learning that is important for students to know, understand and be able to do. Essential questions go beyond factual information to uncover big ideas and significant learning. They identify overarching concepts or principles and reflect curriculum goals and/or standards. Essential questions reflect the key understandings, critical content, and big ideas that you want students to know, understand, and be able to do after they have completed your lessons/activities.
Formulating Essential Questions for your teaching will help you: Identify the concepts or ideas that are the most important (critical content) for students to know and understand, or be able to do. Focus your instructional planning. Identify recurring themes that can unify a subject or curriculum across grade levels. Writing Essential Questions To formulate Essential Questions for your curriculum, ask yourself, according to your standards: What are the most important concepts/principles for my course? What is essential for my students to know, understand, and be able to do? What are the recurring ideas, concepts, and/or themes? Tips for writing Essential Questions Limit the number of Essential Questions that you plan per class dayone or two a lesson will keep everyone focused, but not be overwhelming. Identify the key concepts, vocabulary, principles, etc. that correspond with your standards and those that will be addressed through standardized testing. Make certain that your Essential Questions reflect the standards, etc. Formulate your Essential Questions in terminology that your students will easily understand. Be certain that each Essential Question focuses on a different content element. Reminder: What we want students to know or understand has to do with concepts/knowledge, while what we want them to be able to do has to do with skills.