What’s an essencial question?
This chapter addresses the issue of helping our students understand by using essencial questions. Now, if talking about essencial questions, the first ones that come to my mind are What for? Why do I need to make use of essencial questions in my lessons?. After reading this chapter I tried to follow a sequence in order to answer this questions and came to several interpretations of what essencial questions could do for my lessons. To start, they are a key resource in our lessons, yet not the answer to teachers’ quest for student’s understanding. Our lessons should balance fun activities and thoughtful questions that allow our students to go beyond mere topics or contents.
What do I have to think about when producing essencial questions for my students?
When thinking about questions for tests or to introduce a new topic I think about what I want my students to answer to lead the class to the point I want to get. Nevertheless, essencial questions shouldn’t be conceived with an answer. Furthermore, students are not likely to produce similar answers to essencial questions, since they challenge personal perspectives towards a topic, ability to explore and give it a go to innovative theories. If we think about our informational bakground as a system, then essencial questions lead our students to produce and place “units” in such an accurate way that they are going to enable this system not only to continue working but also to perform new functions.
Are essencial questions applicable to all students?
A question that came to my mind after reading this chapter is what happens with my low-level studens?, since I am sure they have an opinion about different topics yet their level of English would not help them put their ideas into words. Should I just ignore their mistakes to encourage production over form? Should I use these mistakes and start a content analysis from them?
To sum up, what seemed essencial to me to point out is that it is so easy to be tempted by textbook questions which only lead to memory and short-term knowledge that we have a hard battle ahead. It’s up to us to stop and think about innovative ways to introduce a topic, evaluate a lesson, foster new theories, etc, by making use of essencial questions.
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It is good to see how you (Lorena) tackle the issue of students that are not as ‘good at English as they are expected to be’, or ‘slow learners’, or whatever the way one calls them; as a matter of fact, fundamental questions are primarily intended to foster transferability of knowledge, as the authors put forward, and hence the usefulness of thinking about generating those questions that make students go beyond mere information storing. Therefore, as you clearly suggest, it is a hard task for us, to star reflecting and thinking about new or innovative ways of using fundamenal or essential questions. We may even think of personalizing essential questions, for those who are walking slowly in their long way for learning, so as to faccilitate this ‘hard battle’, in which ‘winners and losers' benefit one another.
ReplyDeleteHi Lorena!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you , essencial questions shouldn’t be conceived with an answer,otherwise we are going against the nature of comunication. If you ask a question is because you need or want the other person to give you some kind of information,right?.Presuposing the answers of our students means underestimating their capacity of formulating a coherent response.
Let's set their minds free, it sounds kind of philosophical, but it's the only way they can develop their own ideas and express them.
Thanks,
Vicky
Lorena
ReplyDeleteBalance is the key word to succeed in understanding. In this respect, Essential Questions aim at achieving this balance using different kind of questions which encompass facts and big ideas. All these elements put together will enable students to be critical thinkers.
Regarding your questions about whether Essential questions are applicable to all students, I would say that the answer is yes. It all depends on the phrasing of essential questions. They have to consider the purpose of the questions, the audience and the impact they aim at. Inevitably, the process of each student is going to be different but it does not mean that they are not capable of succeeding in their task.
It really caught my attention your last question: What about low level students?. It is not an easy question. It is true that probably this kind of students will not be able to answer in proper English a much deeper question such an essential one; probably those students will have to use Spanish to try to answer this sort of questions. But the thing is Do I have to develop critical thinking only with the high level students?; What about students from public schools who barely have 2 or 3 hours of English per week, are they able to answer essential questions in English? I think the answer for these questions must be hand-to-hand with the objective and purpose of the lesson which is supposedly dealing with essential questions. It should depend much more on the training to answer these questions and developing critical thinking than on the level of English the students have.
ReplyDeleteHi Lorena!
ReplyDelete"Planning the units to enable students answer these essential questions". This seems an interesting topic to be discussed with our colleagues in the department meetings. Such meetings should be useful for planning the actions to be taken in order to encourage critical thinking in our students. When we analyze the huge task of working these essential questions in our classes, it becomes absulutely necessary to look for help and support. Only team work will facilitate such challenge; sharing ideas, agreeing on common goals and work as a unit to achieve it and improve our lessons.
You mentioned a very important topic to be analised, what happens with low level students?
ReplyDeleteI thought about it while reading the text.
In my personal case, it has been quite hard to make my basic level students produce critical thinking, as they want to give opinions, but they feel frustrated because they can't use English language to comment on some topics.
I would say that essential questions are applicable to all students. The big question is:
HOW can we make them applicable to basic level students???????
hey there,
ReplyDeleteYou made through these point another big issue. Essential question might be a panacea of understanding encourager; however, if this is not appealing, end of the story. To make matters even worse, a quote of “fun” should be added to our questions, though I imagine if this is a real essential question, the question itself is going to be interesting to the students. Yet, unless our students count with a dose of intrinsic motivation, we can’t do much about it to encourage them to participate critically in our lessons. We need by all means a certain level of imagination (and time) to create this entire encouraging atmosphere. It’s unbelievable how much issues get intertwined when we only think deeply about making a question.
In connection to your second point, what happens with those weak students who aren’t able to cope with the language? I think it will depend on your purposes and what you planned for your lesson. You just need to find some strategy to help them develop their ideas with the help of those who move at ease in the class along with your help as back-up. Perhaps, an essential question for them would be to find answers to help themselves to improve their own skills, challenge them to try new ways in which they can learn. Good points you came up with.
Claudio