Step 5

Big Ideas / Enduring Understandings

Three or four foundational understandings (main ideas, conclusions, generalizations) that educators want their students to discover and state in their own words by the end of the unit of study. Written as complete sentences, not phrases, Big Ideas convey to students the benefit or value of learning the standards in focus that they are to remember long after instruction ends.

• Three types
  • Broad - Generalization derived from one area of study that can be equally applicable to other areas of study.
    • Ex. We interpret information and draw conclusions both from what we read and from what we experience in real life.
  • Topical - Relates clearly to one content area only.
    • Ex. Mathematical formulas and estimates provide shortcuts for determining needed mathematical information.
  • Both Broad and Topical - Occasionally a Big Idea fits both types.
    • Ex. Objects can be compared, classified, and sorted by their different attributes. (Can be true for both science and math)

Purpose

Help students scaffold their understanding so they can eventually make further generalizations and connections to other units of study within one discipline and to other disciplines. Educators must connect each day's lesson to essential questions

Creating the Big Ideas

• Adult Worded - It is appropriate to use a variety of writing styles to communicate information for a variety of purposes and to a variety of audiences.
• Student Worded - Writers need to know how to write in different ways for different people.

Essential Questions

Engaging, open-ended questions that educators use to spark initial student interest in learning the content of the unit about to commence. Even though plainly worded, they carry with them an underlying rigor. The goal is for students to be able to effectively respond to the teacher's Essential Questions with the Big Ideas stated in their own words by the end of the unit.

• Used throughout the unit to focus instruction and assessment
• Demonstrates students' genuine understandings which require more than superficial thought.

Two-Part Questions

• Part 1 - Recall of important information
• Part 2 - Reveals the underlying rigor and requires a higher level of thinking to respond correctly

Putting It All Together

ELA --

Big Idea - Literary devices enhance and deepen fiction's impact upon the reader.

Essential Questions - What are literary devices? Why do authors use them?

Math --

Big Idea - Estimation produces a value that comes close to a problem's actual answer. Whether you estimate or need to find the actual answer depends on the situation.

Essential Questions - What is estimation? Why do we need to know how to estimate?

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can Essential Questions be written before the Big Idea?
  • Yes, but you must still figure out the Big Idea response to that question. One effective way of creating the Essential Question is to look at the Big Idea and think, "If that's the desired response, what's the question?"
• Must there be a one-to-one correspondence between the Big Idea and the Essential Question?
  • No, but educators usually write them in matching pairs. It is acceptable to have one Essential Question that will yield two corresponding Big Idea responses.
• When students are reading multiple stories within a unit of study, should the Big Ideas stay the same while the Essential Questions change to fit a particular story or text?
  • Essential Questions and Big Ideas remain the same throughout the unit, since they are directly related to the unwrapped standards.

What does it look like?