Use the definitions below to help you write the Enduring Understanding and at least 4 Essential Questions. State the subject area and grade level and explain why you think the essential questions are fundamental to students learning in this subject area. How can the essential questions drive your instruction? Give feedback and ask clarifying questions. How will you assess student learning in this unit (formative & summative)?
Definition: Enduring Understandings
Enduring understandings are statements summarizing important ideas and core processes that are central to a discipline and have lasting value beyond the classroom. They synthesize what students should understand—not just know or do—as a result of studying a particular content area. Moreover, they articulate what students should “revisit” over the course of their lifetimes in relationship to the content area.
Enduring understandings:
-frame the big ideas that give meaning and lasting importance to such discrete curriculum elements as facts and skills
-can transfer to other fields as well as adult life
-“unpack” areas of the curriculum where students may struggle to gain understanding or demonstrate misunderstandings and misconceptions
-provide a conceptual foundation for studying the content area and are deliberately framed as
-declarative sentences that present major curriculum generalizations and recurrent ideas.
Example:
Reading/Literature
This is an Enduring Understanding
Reading is a process by which we construct meaning about the information being communicated by an author within a print or non-print medium.
Essential Question
Isopen-ended; that is, it typically will not have a single, final, and correct answer.
Is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.
Calls for higher-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction.
It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone.
Points toward important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across) disciplines.
Raises additional questions and sparks further inquiry.
Requires support and justification, not just an answer.
Recurs over time; that is, the question can and should be revisited again and again.
This is an Essential Question:
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