1. EDSU 534
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:
THE BIG IDEAS

2. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
BLOOM'S TAXONOMY
UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN
BACKWARDS DESIGN
DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE (DOK)
THE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCT

3. Thinking Levels
Ask students to demonstrate:
 Knowledge - recall information in original form
 Comprehension - show understanding
 Application - use learning in a new situation
 Analysis - show s/he can see relationships
 Synthesis - combine and integrate parts of prior
knowledge into a product, plan, or proposal that
is new
 Evaluation - assess and criticize on basis of
standards and criteria

4. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Creating
Evaluating
• Creating –
designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventi
ng, devising, making
• Evaluating –
checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, ju
dging, testing, detecting, monitoring
Analyzing
Applying
• Analyzing –
comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, o
utlining, finding, structuring, integrating
• Applying – implementing, carrying
out, using, executing
Understanding
Remembering
• Understanding –
interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, cl
assifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
• Remembering –
recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving
, naming, locating, finding

5. Framing Essential Questions
Essential Questions at the top of Bloom’s
Taxonomy
 Create - innovate
 Evaluate – make a thoughtful choice
between options, with the choice based on
a clearly stated criteria
 Synthesize – invent a new or different
version
 Analyze – develop a thorough and
complex understanding through skillful
questioning.

6. Essential Questions: EQs
 Spark our curiosity and sense of wonder
 Desire to understand
 Something that matters to us
 Answers to EQs can NOT be found
 Students must construct own answers
 Make their own meaning from information
they have gathered
 Create insight

7. Essential Questions
 Answering such questions may
take a lifetime!
 Answers may only be tentative
 Information gathering may take
place outside of formal learning
environments
 Engage students in real life applied
problem solving
 EQs lend themselves to
multidisciplinary investigations.

8. Ideal Essential Questions
 Framed by students themselves
 Best to start with subsidiary
questions that might help support the
main question
 Formulate categories of related
questions
 “What else do we need to know?
 State suppositions
 Hypothesizing and Predicting
 Thought process helps provide a basis for
construction of meaning.

9. Understanding by Design
Represent a big idea having
enduring value beyond the
classroom
Reside at the heart of
the discipline (involve
“doing” the subject)
Uncover abstract
misunderstood
ideas
Engaging
Students
 What are the big ideas?





Core concepts
Focusing themes
On-going debates/issues
Insightful perspectives
Illuminating
paradox/problem
 Organizing theory
 Overarching principle
 Underlying assumption
 What’s the evidence?
Enduring
Understanding
 How do we get there?

10. Understanding by Design
Identify
desired
results
Determine
acceptable
evidence
Plan learning
experiences and
instruction
 Desired Results: What will the
student learn?
 Acceptable Evidence: How
will you design an assessment
that accurately determines if
the student learned what
he/she was supposed to learn?
 Lesson Planning: How do you
design a lesson that results in
student learning?

11. Understanding by Design
Worth being familiar
with
Important to know
and do
Enduring
Understanding
Will this lesson lead to enduring understanding?

12. Understanding by Design
Performance tasks and projects need
assessments that are more authentic than
traditional quizzes and tests.
Performance tasks
and projects
Summative Culminating
Activity
 Open-ended
 Project
 Complex
 Product or Publication
 Authentic
 Performance or Presentation
 Exhibition

13. Webb’s
Depth of
Knowledge

14. DOK Levels 1 & 2: Common Core
State Standards (CCSS)
 Recall and Reproduction: Level 1
 DOK 1 requires recall of information, such as a
fact, definition, or term, or performance of a simple
process or procedure.
 Skills and Concepts: Level 2
 DOK 2 includes the engagement of some mental
processing beyond recalling or reproducing a response.
Items require students to make some decisions as to
how to approach the question or problem.

15. DOK Levels 3 & 4: CCSS
 Strategic Thinking: Level 3
 DOK 3 requires deep understanding as exhibited
through planning, using evidence, and more demanding
cognitive reasoning. The cognitive demands at Level 3
are complex and abstract.
 Extended Thinking: Level 4
 DOK 4 requires high cognitive demand and is very complex.
Students are expected to make connections – relate ideas
within the content or among content areas – and have to
select or devise one approach among many alternatives on
how to solve the problem.

16. Career Technical Standards
 California CTE Standards – Under Revision
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/sf/ctemcstandards.asp
 Introduction:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/sf/documents/ctestdfro
ntpages.pdf

17. Beyond Knowledge Construct
CTE Highest Level – CREATE!
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/sf/documents/ctestdfrontpages.pdf

18. Factual








Access
Define
Describe
Find
Identify
Label
List
Locate









Match
Name
Recall
Recite
Recognize
Remember
Retrieve
Select
State

19. Conceptual










Adhere
Apply
Classify
Communicate
Compare
Demonstrate
Develop
Discriminate
Employ
Explain












Implement
Infer
Interpret
Maintain
Organize
Participate
Practice
Promote
Summarize
Transfer
Understand
Use

20. Procedural










Analyze
Assess
Comply
Compare
Contrast
Deconstruct
Deduce
Defend
Detect
Diagram











Differentiate
Discern
Distinguish
Enhance
Evaluate
Experiment
Explore
Illustrate
Integrate
Research
Solve

21. Metacognitive
 Advocate
 Formulate
 Build
 Invent
 Compile
 Plan
 Compose
 Predict
 Construct
 Produce
 Create
 Reconstruct
 Design
 Reorganize
 Devise
 Synthesize

22. CTE Industry Sectors
Model Curriculum Standards
 Agriculture and
Natural Resources
 Education, Child
Development, and Family
 Arts, Media, and
Entertainment
Services
 Energy, Environment, and
Utilities
 Engineering and
Architecture
 Fashion and Interior Design
 Building and
Construction Trades
 Business and Finance
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/sf/ctemcstandards.asp

23. CTE Industry Sectors
Model Curriculum Standards
 Health Science and
 Manufacturing and
Medical Technology
 Hospitality, Tourism,
and Recreation
 Information and
Communication
Technologies
Product
Development
 Marketing Sales and
Service
 Public Services
 Transportation
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/sf/ctemcstandards.asp