Carole Boston Weatherford: Using Black Music & Children's Literature To Teach Social Justice

What are ""essential questions,"" and how do they differ from other kinds of questions? What's so great about them? Why should you design and use essential questions in your classroom? Essential questions (EQs) help target standards as you organize curriculum content into coherent units that yield focused and thoughtful learning. In the classroom, EQs are used to stimulate students' discussions and promote a deeper understanding of the content. Whether you are an Understanding by Design (UbD) devotee or are searching for ways to address standards-local or Common Core State Standards-in an engaging way, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins provide practical guidance on how to design, initiate, and embed inquiry-based teaching and learning in your classroom. Offering dozens of examples, the authors explore the usefulness of EQs in all K-12 content areas, including skill-based areas such as math, PE, language instruction, and arts education. As an important element of their backward design approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the authors: Give a comprehensive explanation of why EQs are so important. Explore seven defining characteristics of EQs. Distinguish between topical and overarching questions and their uses. Outline the rationale for using EQs as the focal point in creating units of study. Show how to create effective EQs, working from sources including standards, desired understandings, and student misconceptions. Using essential questions can be challenging-for both teachers and students-and this book provides guidance through practical and proven processes, as well as suggested ""response strategies"" to encourage student engagement. Finally, you will learn how to create a culture of inquiry so that all members of the educational community-students, teachers, and administrators-benefit from the increased rigor and deepened understanding that emerge when essential questions become a guiding force for learners of all ages.

How can changing laws change people's attitudes? What makes an answer exact? How do writers make characters heroic? This time-saving resource is packed with hundreds of big questions that dig deep into the key topics taught in grades 4 to 8--from animal habitats to literary genres to the Constitution. Organized by curriculum area and topic, these essential questions help teachers and students begin rich inquiry studies, focusing on the core ideas and understandings that anchor each discipline. Covers 40 topics in math, language arts, science, and social studies. For use with Grades 4-8.

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.