Woodcutting: Changing the Ritual
After getting my Enduring Understandings finished last week, I next sought out to write Essential Questions. I’ve never felt before like I’ve been successful writing EQ’s the first time I plan a unit; I frequently only realized the real EQ as I taught.
This shouldn’t have surprised me. In the past, I’ve always written EQ’s before creating my assessments and lesson outlines, which is explicitly what UbD suggests you’re not supposed to do. UbD insists that though there are three stages of planning, the first of which involves crafting understandings and essential questions, these stages of planning do not happen linearly. Stage 1 is a good place to start, but it’s not the only place to start. The key is ensuring that all three stages work together in the end. As commenters both online and off have pointed out when seeing my understandings, they don’t mean much without the assessments that go with them; it’s only natural that they go hand in hand.
(The next two paragraphs are really technical and jargonny. Feel free to skip if you have no idea or interest in what I’m writing about.)
Unfortunately, there is a practice that is increasingly common in NYC schools that does not allow for this natural unit planning to occur: the