UBD Reading

         The UBD reading discusses the importance of Understanding By Design in planning curriculum. With UBD or understanding by design teachers plan lessons or units backwards by first focusing on what standards they would like to address and identifying the end result they would like to achieve. Teachers then determine what evidence they can use to reach this final or end result and go on to plan out how they will instruct and teach their students to reach the desired result. A concept that I found interesting in this reading about UBD was essential questions and their importance in UBD.

            Essential questions are questions that make students think and they have more than one answer as opposed to knowledge questions, which will only have one definite answer.  Essential questions lead to better understanding and student inquiry. They keep important questions alive, are meant to be explored, and are thought provoking. Essential questions are crucial in my content area of history because they are meant to have more than one answer or opinion and raise new questions. By doing this essential questions keep students interested and engaged. This is important in history because non-essential questions that just ask for dates and names can be boring.

            While reading about essential questions I found myself thinking about writing my interest inventory for class. While writing my interest inventory I found that it was difficult to come up with questions that would render more than a yes or no answer from students. I know that writing essential questions is something that I definitely need to practice. Through both writing my interest inventory and reading about essential questions I have learned how important asking the right questions and wording them in a way that is thought provoking can be in teaching students effectively.