Doorways to Understanding

Every time we are about to introduce a new topic or idea to our students, we expect them to relate the hints given with some issue of their lives, to think beyond what is being asked and open their minds. In chapter 5 of Understanding by design, Wiggins and Mc Tighe introduce the topic of the Essential Questions deeply. These questions, as it was stated before, are to introduce a new topic, and help them to understand what is going to be taught better. The idea is that they were able to carry out the process of transferring information so that they can make progress of their different skills.

If we talk about the main characteristics that make these questions “essential”, we can realize that, first of all, these questions have to be directed to them, their interests, their needs, issues and topics of their own real lives; these have to be timeless as well, they should not have an answer, they have to be totally open for students to think and therefore develop their cognitive skills. This means that each student may answer that question in a different way, depending on their life experience. As we have already learned from Wiggins and Mc Tighe, is that every topic to be taught has to have a purspose, a purpose where students are suppossed to develop their skills or at least, some of them; and this has to be included in those questions.

The authors point out two different kind os Essentials Questions, the ones related to specific topics and the other group of questions which is about more general topics. They say that it is necessary to mix up these two kinds of questions because they can give different kind of information and details which, undoubtedly, will enrich the topic introduction.The importance of these essential questions is that we are doing very important things without letting learners know. We are making them be the protagonists of the lesson and what is more, we are collecting information about themselves, which is absolutely much useful, in order to start teaching a lesson meaningfully. By getting all that information, we are able to head the planning in a specific way. These questions have to be catching and suitable for them. They have to feel encouraged to keep thinking about the question at home, so that they can make conncetions base don their own experiences.

As far as my own teaching experience has taught me, studets always feel encouraged to learn English, they really like it if the teacher provides the conditions to do it so, in a second language classroom, these questions can be really helpful in all levels. It does not matter if the concepts in a language are not specific but very general since in English or in any language, we are teaching skills such as productive and recpetive for them to communicate, not contents like in the other school subjects.