The Second Principle
What are Essential Questions?

Leslie Owen Wilson

Owen Wilson, Leslie. “What Are Essential Questions?” The Second Principle, 2014, thesecondprinciple.com/teaching-essentials/essential-questions/.

Date: 07/28/19

List of primary claims made in this reading:

Essential Questions – A key part of the instructional design process 

Essential questions are probing questions that set the tone for students-led probing, self-discovery, and provide deeper understanding to our world, and encourage the development of personal agency. 

Key Quotes:

Comprehensive, well-crafted questions ground intellectual pursuits giving students some sense of direction, purpose, and relevance as they are engaged in the work of the subject.

As students problem solve, read, inquire, sift and sort related knowledge and skills, essential questions become end points, beacons to final destinations, and landmarks marking the way.

In essence it is noted that “a good essential question is the principal component of designing inquiry-based learning. It is” essential questions that encourage collaboration among students, teachers, and the community and integrate technology to support the learning process. (sic)”  (Source: http://mc2.nmsu.edu/mathnm/exploration1/unit/content_questions.html)

They have emotive force with an intellectual bite, and readily invite the exploration of ideas.

They are meant to be wrestled with, chewed on, pondered over, read and talked about, as answers to these types of questions frequently have no right or wrong answers. Often, these are questions that have either moral or ethical foundations the students will have to take a stand on and defend as they engage in constructing individual meaning.

Questions of the reading?

What is an appropriate time frame for the introduction and "completion" of an essential question?

Further reading.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2013) Essential questions: Opening doors to student understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development).

McTighe, J. (2017) Designing and Using Essential Questions (Quick Reference Guide) Pamphlet. Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development).

(2011) The Essential Questions Handbook: Hundreds of Guiding Questions That Help You Plan and Teach Successful Lessons in the Content Areas Paperback. Scholastic Teacher’s Resources.

A Baker’s Dozen – 13 questions to help you determine if yours are Essential Questions
No	Yes	1.  Is the question meaningful and purposeful?
		2.  Is the question open-ended? Is it one that can be revisited, or has been revisited over time?
		3.  Does the question require support, rationale, or justification, not just an answer or response?
		4.  Does the question lead students to ask other questions?
		5.  Does the question appeal to or trigger emotional responses?
		6.  Does the question encourage intellectual examination and responses?
		7.  Does the question center on a topic that is relevant to students? Is it a major issue, a problem, of particular interest or concern to their generation?
		8.  Does the question encourage discussion and/or collaboration?
		9.  Does the question ask the student to consider moral or ethical issues?
		10. Does the question encourage discourse, discussion, or debate?
		11. Does the question ask the learner to make a decision(s), create a plan of action, or come to a conclusion after examining related facts and issues?
		12. Does the question encourage higher levels of cognitive processing – analysis, inference, evaluation, predicting, synthesis or creation.
		13. Does the question lead the learner to important, transferable, applicable ideas that may cross disciplines or subjects, or help unite varied disciplines?

Whole Book Approach : Episode 95: Reading Picture Books with Children – Interview with Megan Dowd Lambert

diyMFA

Episode 95: Reading Picture Books with Children – Interview with Megan Dowd Lambert

Gabriela Pereira

Pereira, G., & Dowd Lambert, M. (2018, January 11). Episode 95: Reading Picture Books - Megan Dowd Lambert Interview. Retrieved from https://diymfa.com/podcast/episode-95-reading-picture-books-megan-dowd-lambert. Podcast.

Date: 10/8/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading/listening:

• The Whole Book Approach - reading with children, as opposed to reading to them, as it invites children to make meaning of text, art, and designIntegrating design elements into the publishing process
• Teaching interaction between reader, text, and author
• Being intentional to convey diversity on the page of your book

Key Quotes:

If kids can remember the name so of dinosaur species and their characteristics they are more than capable and are ready to learn why/how an author writes a book. - paraphrased, need to go back and listen again

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

Questions of the reading?

Facing Your Mid-Career Crisis : Should you cope or quit?

Harvard Business Review | Volume 97, Issue 2, Why Feedback Fails

Facing Your Mid-Career Crisis : Should you cope or quit?

Kieran Setiya

Setiya, Kieran. “Facing Your Mid-Career Crisis. Should You Cope or Quit?” Harvard Business Review, 2019, pp. 135–139.

Date: 03/05/18

Mid-Career Crisis is natural. Setiya identifies a few psychological reasons for mid-career crisis and strategies to find satisfaction in your current career - 

1. Regrets about the past - fixating on the idea that as we make decisions other possibilities are rejected and we our potential is limited. 

2. Making or feeling like failure, mistakes, or wrong turns. We should be looking at the big picture, not at individual projects/events. 

3. Pursue projects with existential value - the kind that make life worth living. Projects aim at completion, therefore the termination of a project marks the end of its existential worth. If we live in the present and look toward a bigger picture, we can eliminate the feeling of temporary satisfaction or dissatisfaction at the beginning and end of projects. 

4. Balance telic (aim at a terminal state) and antelic (without an end built in) activities. Example: the difference between putting your child to bed (telic) and parenting (antelic). Atelic activities are realized in the present. 

Key Quotes:

"The only way to avoid regret entirely is the care about just one thing, one metric to max out. But that would impoverish your life. Remind yourself that feeling you've missed out is the inevitable consequence of something good: the capacity to find worth in many walks of life."

Ameliortive Value - the value of solving a problem or answering a need, even when the need is one you'd rather not confront. Example: conflicts between colleagues, meet targets, putting out fires, etc.

Existential Value - the value of solving a problem or answering a need that makes life worth living, that make a meaningful impact. 

Questions of the reading?

Read Aloud Resources_For Further Review

Teacher Read-Aloud That Models Reading for Deep Understanding
http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teacher-read-aloud-that-30799.html

International Literacy Association 
https://www.literacyworldwide.org/

Revisiting Read-Alouds: Instructional Strategies that Encourage Students' Engagement with Text
By: Vanessa Morrison, Lisa Wheeler
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/revisiting-read-alouds-instructional-strategies-encourage-students-engagement-text

Effective Read-Aloud Strategies for Your Classroom
https://www.advancementcourses.com/blog/readaloud-strategies

In Defense of Read-Aloud: Sustaining Best Practice
Written by Steven Layne Foreword by Regie Routman
https://www.stenhouse.com/content/defense-read-aloud

Mechanics of Read Aloud

Mechanics of Read Aloud

Dr. Brian Sturm

Date: 02/03/2016

In this video, from the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill, discusses some of the fundamentals of reading aloud picture books to young children.

Key Lessons:

Make sure listeners sit at a 90 degree angle so that everyone can see.

Eye contact with listeners is very important.

Books are intended to be read close by one/two people, for this reason EVERY book does not make a great read aloud book for small children. Be weary of small intricate illustrations and too much text.

Choosing a good read aloud book -

• Simple illustrations
• Bold outlines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54mcQtP6i0k

Postmodern Principles: In Search of 21st Century Art Education

Art Education Journal | January 2004

Postmodern Principles: In Search of 21st Century Art Education

https://www.academia.edu/848181/Postmodern_Principles_In_Search_of_a_21st_Century_Art_Education

Olivia Gude

Gude, Olivia. “Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education.” Academia.edu - Share Research, www.academia.edu/848181/Postmodern_Principles_In_Search_of_a_21st_Century_Art_Education

Date: 02/26/2019

What do our students need to know to understand the art of many cultures, in the past and in the 21st century?

Olivia Gude's Addition to Principle of Design

Appropriation
For the students, recycling imagery felt comfortable and commonplace.

If one lives in a forest, wood will likely become one’s medium for creative play. If one grows up in a world filled with cheap, disposable images, these easily become the stuff out of which one makes one’s own creative expression.

Juxtaposition
Robert Rauschenberg revolutionized expressive painting when he substituted the seemingly random juxtaposition of found images for the personally generated abstract mark.

Recontextualization
The term juxtaposition is useful in helping students to discuss the familiar shocks of contemporary life in which images and objects from various realms and sensibilities come together in intentional clashes or in random happenings.

Often the meaning of the artwork is generated by positioning a familiar image in relationship to pictures, symbols, or texts with which it is not usually associated. 

Layering
As images become cheap and plentiful, they are no longer treated as precious and placed carefully side by side, but instead are often literally piled on top of each other.

Interaction of Text & Image
The text does not describe the work, nor does the image illustrate the text, but the interplay between the two elements generates rich, (and ironic), associations about gender, social possibilities, and cleanliness. Students making and valuing art in the 21st century must to be taught not to demand the literal matching of verbal and visual signifiers, but rather to explore disjuncture between the two modes as a source of meaning and pleasure.

Hybridity
The concept of hybridity also describes the cultural blending evident in many artists’ productions.

Gazing
The term gaze is frequently used in contemporary discourses to recognize that when talking about the act of looking it is important to consider who is doing the looking and who is being looked at (Olin, 1996). Gazing, associated with issues of knowledge and pleasure is also a form of power—controlling perceptions of what is “real” and “natural.”

Representin’
U.S. urban street slang for proclaiming one’s identity and affiliations, Representin’, describes the strategy of locating one’s artistic voice within one’s personal history and culture of origin.

Key Quotes:

"I pondered the piles of insignificant exercises on line, shape, or color harmonies that I have seen left behind by hundreds and hundreds of students at year’s end. I wonder why what is still considered by many to be the appropriate organizing content of the foundations of 21st century art curriculum is but a shadow of what was modern, fresh, and inspirational 100 years ago."

Quotes | Creativity

Ongoing list of quotes to do with creativity. 
---
Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy. Ms Frizzle
Creativity takes courage. Henri Matisse
Stress and worry, they solve nothing. What they do is block creativity. You are not even able to think about the solutions. Every problem has a solution. -Susan L. Taylor
My life didn’t please me, so I created my life. Coco Chanel
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Maya Angelou
The most talented, thought-provoking, game-changing people are never normal. Richard Branson
If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things. Larry Page
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. Brené Brown
Create with the heart; build with the mind. Criss Jami
The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. Martin Luther King Jr.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath
My life didn’t please me, so I created my life. Coco Chanel
Almost all creativity requires purposeful play. Abraham Maslow
Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity. Joel Salatin
Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. Victor Pinchuk
When you can do a common thing in an uncommon way; you will command the attention of the world. George Washington Carver