Essetial questions:
Doorway to understanding.
“It is through the process of actively interrogating the content through ‘provocative’ questions that students deepen their understanding”
I wanted to start with this quote since I think the idea of “interrogating” our students is not that new; in fact, we as teachers tend to ask questions to our students in order to know how much they understand. We need to know whether they follow us or not; nevertheless, there is something that caught my attention and it has to do with the “kind” of questions we ask. Because it’s not any kind of question, it’s “provocative” questions, which makes a big difference I think, since Wiggings refers to them as the kind of questions that make our students react, whose answers are not over there but need to be discovered through discussion and reflection, stepping back into their own experience, reviewing and analyzing carefully what’s in their minds, and which probably would lead them to ask more and more questions.
Therefore, as a result, we have this concept of Essential questions, which as I already said, besides promoting understanding of a content, they also spark connections and promote transfer of ideas from one setting to others, leading to deeper understandings and new questions. I think Wiggings is also appealing to students’ personal commitment with his concept of essential questions, because what he wants to do is to sort of “wake up” students and make them react to the different proposals offered by the teacher, in order to go beyond and search reflection of ideas. Students need to be challenged in order to not get bored in classes and feel that learning is a process where they are active participants and not a pasive audience which only receives what the teacher gives. But what if teachers are not able to provoke this real interest in students? What if the questions arisen in their lessons are not challenging enough? Would students lose interest? Would they really learn?
To sum up, I would like to say that - It’s not only to know the meaning of words in a sentence, but what it really means as a whole structure.- students must be able to interpret and analyze what’s in front of their eyes, and only then we will know that they are developing their critical thinking.
The "wake up" concept you mention is very interesting, I did not see the concept of essential questions under that perpective, but it is true, those essential questions are a wake up call for students to participate actively in classes, to make them know that they are a fundamental part in the learning process, students must start discussing ideas, but here arise a problem, what about teachers, are teacher really going to accepts students that are able to think by themselves? most of the teacher think they are problematic students. After reading this chapter we can think on having that kind of students, but what about the rest of the teachers?
ReplyDeleteScarlette
ReplyDeleteThere is a misleading usage of the term “questions” when we are referring to assess if our students understand something. As you said, teachers tend to ask students if they understand the contents taught looking for a right answer. When teachers do that, they are not assessing understanding but knowledge of facts. Besides, they are preventing students from being active in their own learning. If our goal is to assess for understanding is vital to think of provocative questions which enable students to ask more questions and to find answers around reflection and discussion. Indeed, these characteristics are fulfilled by Essential questions.
It is true that we as teachers of English everyday deal with strategies to develop and encourage the development of a foreign language acquisition. But we do not to have to forget that we also deal with values and first principles for being “a person”. Therefore, our students must develop critical thinking. We have to develop this crucial and cornerstone ability, because this ability to “think” will help our students not to acquire a language, but to live in a real world where they do form part. As the author said, we have to use medium questions, to use “balanced” questions in order to our student be able to answer them.
ReplyDeleteIt is a daily reality that we teachers are too concerned about if students are understanding what we teach them, we are all the time checking if they are following us or not through questions like "Did you understand?", "Are you sure?". Then we prepare lots of activities to reinforce the subject, and we think that the questions and activities are enough to the understanding process.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is we are not carrying out the "wake up" process you mentioned, we are still making the mistake of creating an enviorenment with pasive participants who only receive what the teacher gives.
We teachers haven't really noticed how important is to make students produce critical thinking and to go beyond what we give them.
Hi Scarlette,
ReplyDeleteWhat called my attention from your post was the term "connections" in relation to essencial questions. In my opinion, the common mistake we teachers make is that our questions tend to be addressed to "short-term understanding". In other words, knowing something by heart or knowing simply because students revised it recently. The problem lies in the difficulty to create a web in which they can organize meaningfully every piece of information to be taken whenever they need it.
It is fundamental that we teachers help our students not only to acquire a content but most importantly to be able to know what to do with it.
I would like to refer to what Daniela said two posts above. Dani, I fully agree with you, but I think teachers DO realize of the importance of making the students produce critical thinking, but I think they do not care about it or they do not want the students to think critically. I have two reasons to say this: (i) As the boss does not want a clerk to know more than he/she does beacuse it is dangerous; the teacher does not want students who may be more critical than he/she would be because it may also be dangerous. The reason behind is fear; one of the issues we have discussed in class in the past, along with the feeling of control and security that a teacher needs to be such in a classroom. (ii)The other reason is economy. Teachers live in constant tension, stress and they lack time. Sometimes, they cannot even spend time with their beloved ones because they have to prepare lessons; so, imagine teachers preparing lessons (or each lesson) in order to make his/her students think critically... It would be a chaos. It would demand half of your day. Therefore, as I said before, it is more economical to ask factual-specific-topical questions that will not take too long in their preparation and will allow the teacher to be in control of a class, be the wiser of the group, make sure the students 'know' before the test... And will allow him/her to be at home at night without anything to think about.
ReplyDeleteBye my Dear!
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI think you tackled a very interesting point when you put forward commitment. The engagement of students in a lesson, from the very beginning of the year and in every single class is a key issue. When that has been accomplished, essential questions are to be presented in every learning opportunity.
The idea is to let our students build their our knowledge - meaningfully - and leave the ideas going through their minds for a while, and discover the answers. The 'why' questions make a difference in what we can ask our students to do.
The activities we do also have to lead the questioning we expect them to do, by focusing enquiry in them. The discovering, the tackling of different issues is what we ought to do. Otherwise, prepacked knowledge makes no difference and nothing is understood.