Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding.

When we talk about understanding it means that everything has to be covered. In other words, to achieve understanding it is necessary to cover different aspects during the whole process of assessment. For that reason, educators have to manage more than knowledge, they need to make connections to stimulate students' minds. As facilitators teachers have to control those big ideas which are promoting new aspects in the learning.

Teaching is an action that compels teachers to ask constantly, however questioning is not a simple exercise within the class. Questions are the main point when students have to be encouraged by educators. Using questions that "effectively frame our work" the possibilities of achieve a good result in terms of effective learning are bigger. When teachers make questions these questions have to be focused on creating meaningful connections in order to stimulate and motivate students in that area. As tools of teaching, questions have to be well guided because if they are not well focused on the specific topic or point they would be a wall for students to get in the main idea. Good questions are always pointing to the center of the problem.

As fundamental tools, essential questions are not essential for themselves. This means that they depend on more factors that help them to be really effective. Purpose, audience and the impact that they provoque are components that are connected with the intent or purpose that teachers are trying to find on students. However, the way educators manage those elements is a challenge during the whole learning process they have to deal with. In he design, questions have to be formulated from an integrative perspective that stimulate inquire on students' minds as a dual process.

Finally, in the discussion if essential questions are focused on certainn subjects like English and not in others, it is necessary to say that essential questions are trying to develop more than skills or content, their intent is to establish those big ideas into consideration on students's minds. The purpose of asking questions compel both teachers and students to connect big ideas, essential questions and skills to cover every aspect of learning, where the scope of their effectiveness is linked to the reflection and design of them.

Backward Design. Chapter 1.

As teachers we have to think and prepare our classes to facilitate students’ performances and understandings. Design is a complex task in the educational process which means a big challenge when teachers have to analyze and apply concepts in the classroom. For that reason, designers have to manage techniques to create better procedures in the process.

Design means to understand students’ needs to face those opportunities. At the beginning of the process designers have to determine goals to achieve as clear purposes in the learning, “in other words, all the methods and materials we use are shaped by a clear conception of the vision of desired results” (Wiggins & Mc Tighe) Expected outcomes are the objectives that help us to clarify and determine what contents and how those contents should be learnt effectively by students.

Three points are necessary to carry out backward design. First; identify desired problems, which is the step to develop clarity in the design. Determine acceptable evidence means that we need to know if students have achieved the objectives that we proposed to achieve using evidence to analyze them. Finally, with plan learning experiences and instruction, designers have to think in the best instructional activities to connect their objectives with students’ needs according to the results and the evidence that has been observed.

Before planning a course we have to make our thoughts, ideas and goals as clear as possible to design units connected to real understanding for students. Moreover, designers have to manage these tools to develop better plans and classes in the classroom to reduce mistakes, in order to improve the educational process.

Criteria and Validity

During the whole learning process teachers have to evaluate and assess students´ performances. At the same time teachers need to be precise in their evaluations to not being only focused on performances. The main idea is to measure from the objectives and understandings to be more effective. Therefore before assessing, the idea of determine clear guidelines are important components to analyse the evidence of students` results. In other words, criteria is the necessary element to be "consistent and fair"(Wiggins, 2005) in the process of asessing learners. Criteria is the platform to establish the requirements in the elements of assessment. With criteria teachers can observe their tasks from the beggining as tools to meausre understandings, but also criteria represents the opportunity to know what is needed to success in the process, it helps teachers to obtain a more valid element to measure.

As a fundamental point in criteria, rubric is the internal element that gives a different perspective but also it complements the process, because rubric determines the variations of quality and understandings(Wiggins,2005) Teachers have to use rubrics as much as possible to develop accuracy in their performances, besides rubrics give a point of reference to measure not only performance but also understanding. At the same time rubrics are effective methods to measure understanding as a constant phenomenon. With a rubric teachers can acquire more information about what they are assessing and the results of those evaluations.

In the evaluative process, students can have different understandings of ideas which means that criteria and rubrics have to analyse those variations deeply. In fact, the transference of information on students is a clear demonstration of how they acquire knowledge and the use of it. For a task, criteria means the first stage to generate better pieces of evaluation from the beggining. At the same time, the more you use criteria to analyse student`s understandings the better they will develop their ideas into practice besides, as a valid element, tests and tasks would be more connected with goals that teachers have determined for their projects of learning.

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals.

Learning is a complex and deep area where teachers have to assume a new perspective to improve education and their own qualities of teaching. The idea of helping students to achieve their goals is more than an external mechanism to support their needs and problems, it is beyond traditional stereotypes assumed by generations that have been ineffective. The idea of this proposal is to assume that " our goals are often not as clear as they might be..."( Wiggins, 2005) From this point of view, goals appear not only as the final stage but also as the central element for designing our plan, because our perspective has to be wide and precise in terms of how we develop and apply our goals into practice.

While Understanding implies to comprehend and transfer information in real situations, knowlegde means apprehend the processes of data(Dewey) This idea is fundamental when we talk about Essential Questions which are commonly used by teachers in the classrooms, but it doesn`t mean that those questions are well guided. In fact, it is common that the direction of these questions and its aims are not clear and not well guided by teachers. For that reason is fundamental that teachers identify "explicit learning goals"(Wiggins, 2005) in order to analyse and determine what they have to manage and apply. However, teachers are always facing a problem of amount called " overload problem"( Wiggins,2005) This common difficulty where teachers have to decide the topics and how to do it in a short period of time, it is a common scenario where the best idea is to be focus on quality more than quantity, to help students to make the correct click.

As Wiggins states, " ...big ideas are inherently transferable, they help connect discrete topics and skills". Teachers´ ideas are not commonly bigger than their desires, in other words, their ideas are not so efffective. The problem is that teachers are not able to help students realize about the priorities that the task has in its spirit. Moreover, there is a wall for students between the goal and the challenge to identify that goal. As Wiggins says, "big ideas are the core of the subject"(2005) mainly because students have to discover it to understand the implicit message. These big ideas are representative of what teachers are finding out and reflecting to help students to transfer ideas effectively to avoid misleading and irrelevant processes of learning.

Understanding

Understanding is a complex and wide area in which human beings are immerse all the time. The idea of understanding is part of our evolution and its implicancies has been analysed to understand its problematic. The main problem of understanding is to get its real meaning. When we talk about this concept we have to direct our thoughts inside the word to appreciate that human brains are multiple organisms that control every piece of information that travels in it.

The idea of understanding as a common process is not realistic. In the real context, at schools, we are always evaluating students´performances to measure if they understood or not. So that, understanding is more than a way of assessing someone´s learning process, in fact it is the most higher level to comprehend and to use that information to solve real and difficult situations in their lives.

There is another concept which is absolutely misunderstood. Knowledge has been conceptualized as a general concept where supposedly someone has achieved a level or a new stage of understanding. This idea has limited the dimension of learning giving knowledge a similar condition than understading. As part of a process, knwoledge is a fact, a data or an especific element that helps to acquire more information in order to achieve the prime objective which is understanding.

Understanding is a scenario where connections are happening, where mental structures congregate a big amount of information that is activated through a correct and dynamic construction. When we talk about Understanding it implies a subordinate element that helps to make those connections. Transfer is the road where info is advancing to make the click. The idea of transfering is more than a step or a stage. It means a sophisticated mechanism to put those ideas or concepts into practice, in other words it has the mision of supporting new connections or a new way of thinking that is replacing those first constructions, to assume a new perspective. The complex and successful stage of understanding.