Eclectic Technology
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Eclectic Technology
Tech tools that assist all students to be independent learners & teachers to become better teachers
Curated by Beth Dichter
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Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions

Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it

"Having essential questions drive curriculum and learning has become core to many educators' instructional practices.  Grant Wiggins, in his work on Understanding By Design, describes an essential quetion as:  

A meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable – What is justice?  Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry?  Is science compatible with religion? Is an author’s view privileged in determining the meaning of a text? We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional..."

Beth Dichter's insight:

Why should we teach students to develop their own essential questions? Perhaps because they may be able to develop questions that are engaging and of interest to them. 
Gerstein explores this issue by sharing a variety of resources that look at question, including Jamie McKenzie who describes "what actually happens in most schools and classrooms in terms of questioning", Paul Harris who "argues that questions occupy a more central role than we realize in childhood cognitive development", and others.

In addition there is information on how to help students generate their own essential questions (additional information in the post):

* Begin a New Unit with Students Developing Questions

* Create a Taxonomy of Questions

* Ask Students to Create Questions as Homework

She also shares information on the QFT (Question Formulation Technique) which has six steps, beginning with "Teacher Design a Question Focus" and immediately moves to "Students Produce Questions" and then to "Students Improve Question" and finishes with "Students Reflect on What they have Learned." For more information (and steps 4 and 5) check out the post!

Patrice Bucci's curator insight, September 29, 2013 7:00 PM

So true... I cringe when I am in classrooms with the packaged program "essential question" of the week on the board...and very often those "essential questions" lack cognitive clarity for the students

Mary Reilley Clark's curator insight, January 8, 2014 1:33 PM

A great summary of why questioning still matters.  We've been talking about metacognition a lot this year in the library.  Learning how to develop questions is a large part of learning how you learn and think.

Stacey Jackowski's curator insight, February 19, 2014 8:20 PM

This quote is so true.  Learning how to ask essential questions is a skill that we can carry with us for the rest of our lives and facilitates a lifetime of learning. 

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Why do we give tests? What purpose does it serve?

Why do we give tests? What purpose does it serve? | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it

With the NCLB Act schools have been required to increase their testing. In this post Gerstein states "I believe that tests provide an illusion that something has been learned, one that all stakeholders; teachers, administrators, parents, and students, themselves, have bought into."

She also states that she believes there "are qualitatve differences between assessment, measure, and tests." Gerstein brings in information from Cathy Davidson's post 'How Do We Measure What Really Counts in the Classroom" as well as information about the recent cheating scandal Harvard.

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