Forming essential questions is the beginning step in creatin big ideas for a unit according to the Understanding by Design model. Essential questions are not the type of questions that offer a quick, direct, right or wrong answer. These questions will create debate. Essential questions dig deeper into our thinking and produce even more questions full of transfer possibilities. I amthinking of a history teacher who is teaching a unit on the American Revolution. Would that teacher just be interested and focused on teaching dates, and facts or is the teacher who is influenced to use Ubd going to design the unit based on those essential questions? The UbD trained teacher would use those essential questions to help structure powerful and meaningful lessons for the students. A possible essential question for a unit on the American Revolution could be, "What is the cost of freedom?" Clearly in this type of question there is no simple straight forward answer. This kind of questions opens the door for debate and deep thinking. This type of question would undoubtedly spark deeper thinking and more questionsl This is the goal of UbD. Other examples of big ideas mentioned in this chapter would be questions like, What is democracy? What is racism? At my grade level subject area an essential question might be why do we have numbers? Why are they important? The chapter gave many examples of essential questions that are specific to a topic, problem, or field of study. An example given in this chapter was, " When error is unavoidable in measurement, what margins of error are acceptable?" p. 107 This chapter explains that a question is essential if it does the following:
1. causes genuine inquiry into the big ideas
2. provokes deep thought
3. requires students to consider alternatives
4. stimulates vital ongoing rethinking of big ideas
5. sparks meaningful connections
6. naturally recurs
In conclusion, I liked this chapter because it made me think seriously about developing those essential questions and using them as a guide to develop lessons that are geared toward those big ideas. In scripted curriculums, teachers are programmed to teach like robots sticking to the teacher's manual and not going outside of those resources to plan their own units. I am becoming more and more intrigued and drawn to the UbD method. It makes more sense to start with those big ideas first using essential questions to help guide planning.
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