Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding

The first thing that needs to be said is that questions serve as doorways through which learners explore the key concepts so as to deepen their understanding (p.106).   It is a quite common practice to just ask questions where students must provide an answer that is only focused on the contents dealt in a particular class.  This practice lacks what we have been posting so far - understanding - , most of the time students answer without really thinking what new or prior knowledge is being transferred.  Here is where teachers must take some time and seek for the so called ‘good questions’.  These ones have to trigger meaningful connections with what students are learning or have already learnt.

Even though every single teacher seeks that his/her students relate the contents learnt, it is also true that many of us face a type of student who has not been trained to inquire in the English subject.  Most of them were exposed what the authors have been called – ‘the leading questions’ which cannot be the foundation of a design for understanding because they fixate on facts and demand only recall (p 114).

As a conclusion, we must re-think about how English is being taught in Chile and start making changes within our classrooms.

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

By way of introduction, our goals are not as clear as we think and this might be due to different kinds of objectives which altogether take place in the classroom. One way to solve this ‘chaotic’ situation is by clearly state our desired results. On one hand, we must identify the learning outcomes and how these understandings will be transfer. On the other hand, enabling knowledge and skills needed to perform a particular task.

Wiggins and McTighe (2005) claim that understandings are the attempts students undergo to make sense of the contents by using inquiry, performance and reflection.  In other words, understanding must be comprehended. This chapter outlines the ways in which we can promote this complex task.  One of these is called ‘enabling skills’ i.e. the abilities the students need to succeed in transferring what they have learnt.

Another issue described in this chapter is the amount of contents which exceeds the time needed to learn them. The authors suggest the concept of ‘unpacking contents’, "by clustering the specifics under two broader conceptual umbrellas containing the big ideas and core tasks" (p.53). The function of big ideas is to establish the learning priorities, they help the facts and skills stick together, and therefore they will remain in the learner’s mind. Moreover, we must seek that each learner grasps the idea and use it to hold together related contents. Core tasks can be understood as the opportunities for learning that are aimed at helping teachers use subject matter knowledge to figure out what their students know, to make questions, to evaluate and modify their textbooks.