HI TAC Learning Community:
This week has been full of big ideas and more tips for identifying and framing understandings.It is quite surprisingly to me that the word understanding comes in a plural form. But after learning about the importance of essential questions in planning a unit or a lesson it is becoming easier for me to realise why this word comes in the plural form. The crafting of essential questions is the key to the understanding by design since essential questions are divided into topical and overarching questions. While the overarching questions reach out to information beyond the topic content they are also beneficial for outlines of courses or programs of study. On the other hand, topical questions are of a great value to making the road paved for creating overarching questions. In addition to that, topical questions usually require a right answer which means they don't promote students' curiosity. To make it more clearer to the reader I would say overarching questions are deep and beyond content questions that can be dealt and argued by consecutive generations while topical questions are focused on the unit of study or the most important ideas of the course at hand. An example of an arching question: in your opinion why has Obama been strongly and enthusiastically celebrated and welcomed by the American people as well as by the world? while a topical question would be what are the reasons for Americans and people of different backgrounds to believe Obama is a significant president.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I enjoy your contribution to the topic of essential questions. In my opinion,though I may be wrong, the two questions proposed are arching since they will still require answers related to the whole world. But I think a question like; What influence does a woman have in choosing the president of America? can be regarded as a topical question, because it only focus on the American politics.
ReplyDeleteI belief further comments will throw more light and clarify the assumpions we have.
Regards.
Hello Amira,
ReplyDeleteYou have added some great insight into the concept of essential questions. In my opinion (but not expert opinion because we are all just learners on the topic of ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS!) both of your questions about Obama seem topical to me - I guess because they are not the type of questions which would be asked throughout time....for example, "What is worth dying for?" is the type of question which could be asked throughout history - it is directly related to the human condition, and in many ways, is unanswerable, or answerable only according to the context in which it is asked. If you wanted to ask one about Obama's recent situation perhaps it could be, "When does a man become a leader?"
I agree that Bola's question is topical because it relates to women in American politics but could be essential if she worded it in this way, "How do women influence political decisions?"
I think overarching questions should be so big we can not answer them easily - "What does it mean to teach?" "What is culture?" "What stories do we have to tell?" "What does it mean to be a good citizen?". All of these could be related to any culture, any language, and time in history. Topic questions relate to something more specific...
Thanks for offering more discussion about essential questions and for adding some refelction on very COMPLEX ideas! See you tomorrow...