January 26, 2011
Dommerich Elementary School
Bell-work
Take a moment at your table and
discuss what you know about
essential questions and guiding
questions.
Common Board Configuration
 Date: January 26, 2011
 Benchmark: 3.2.3 Professional learning strategies that increase student
achievement.
 Essential Question: How does questioning impact student achievement?
 Today we are learning: the difference between essential questions and
guiding questions and how they both impact student achievement.
 We are learning this by doing:
 Bell-work
 Vocabulary: Essential Question, Guiding Question
 Table Discussion: Essential vs. Guided
 Summarizing Activity: Essential questions and guiding questions impact
student achievement by……
 Homework: visit the PDS online essential questions module and discuss the
next steps with your grade level team
What is an Essential Question?
 It’s essential: important, vital, at the heart of the
matter-the essence of the issue.
 Grant Wiggins author of Understanding by Design
points out the different connotations
 Important questions that recur throughout one’s life
 Key inquiries within a discipline
 What is needed for learning core content
Purpose of Essential Questions
 Spark curiosity and a sense of wonder (21st century
skill: curiosity and imagination)
 Require students to evaluate, synthesize, and analyze
concepts (21st century skill: accessing and analyzing
information)
 Engage students in real life applied problem-solving
(21st century skill: critical thinking/problem solving)
 Provoke and sustain student interest (21st century skill:
initiative and entrepreneurialism; curiosity and
imagination)
An Essential Question…
 Poses a student learning objective as an inquiry
 Invites the student to search for an answer through
critical thinking
 Helps students see learning objectives in a meaningful
context
 Helps to engage students with the curriculum
 Provides focus for the teacher on what is really
important for the student
Essential Questions lead to . . .
 Understanding
 Focus
 Purpose
 Incentive
 Engagement
Table Discussion
 At your tables discuss and be ready to share out the
similarities and differences between essential
questions and guiding questions.
Essential Questions vs. Guiding Questions
Essential Questions
Guiding Questions
 Over- arching question related
 Specific question that guides
to a unit
 Broad transferable ideas
 Promotes deep understanding
 Can apply to various subjects or
topics
daily lesson
 Focus on facts
 Demand only recall
 Specific to the subject area
Examples of Questions
Essential Questions
Guiding Questions
 Do mathematical models
 What is the area of the
conceal as much as they
reveal?
 Must a story have a moral? A
beginning, middle, and end?
Heroes, and villains?
 How do languages influence
peoples and their nationality?
 How do wars shape alliance
and contribute to national
identities?
rectangle when its length is 7”
and width is 3”?
 What is a plot?
 What are different languages
spoken in America?
 How are political parties
different?
Most commonly asked question type is
factual—seeking the right answer
 “Is such a leading question bad? No. There are all sorts
of good pedagogical reasons for using a question
format to underscore knowledge or to call attention to
a forgotten or overlooked idea. But those questions are
not “essential” in the sense of signaling genuine,
important and necessarily-ongoing inquiries. Teachers
have to be careful not to conflate two ideas: “essential
to me in my role as a teacher” and “essential to anyone
as a thinking person and inquiring student for making
meaning of facts in this subject.” Grant Wiggins
Essential Questions Move Students from Just Knowing to
Truly Understanding
Criteria for Essential Questions




They fulfill learning outcomes
There could be two to five for each unit
Each should frame a distinct section of study
for the unit
Design with a timeframe in mind
Are these essential questions?
 How does a lack of natural resources affect a nation?
 How do we use symbols in mathematics?
 What are examples of scarcity in the Americas, Europe
and Oceania?
 Why do you need to recognize an odd, even, prime and
composite number?
 What are the symbols for equality and inequality?
 Does the molecular motion change in each phase of
matter?
Where do we find essential
questions for the curriculum?
 Social Studies—OCPS Task Analyses
 Math—OCPS Order of Instruction
 Science—OCPS Order of Instruction
 All others—Good idea to work as a team to develop
common essential questions for the curriculum areas
you teach
 BIG IDEA: Constructing essential questions is a way
for school teams to get clarity on the meaning of each
standard!
“Teaching the answers without first
raising the questions takes most of the
meaning out of learning.”
Francis Slater,
London School Of Education
Wrap Up
 Summarizing Activity: Essential
questions and guiding questions impact
student achievement by......
 Homework: Visit the PDS online
essential questions module and discuss
the next steps with your leadership team.
Essential Questions
 PDS online great module to reference as follow up
 http://pdsonline.ocps.net


Log in using your user name and password
Search course: Essential Questions