Essential Questions 6th/7th grade

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Cox on January 28, 2009 at 1:27pm

Hi Ashley
Can you explain what you mean by "essential questions?"

Permalink Reply by Ashley Garner on January 28, 2009 at 2:05pm

Well David, I'm kinda figuring that out myself. :) If I'm understanding correctly, these are questions that would be essential to a 6th grade curriculum, i.e. what I would expect them to know by the end of a unit. And I'm trying to develop ones that would fall higher on Bloom's than say, "How are decimals written as percents?" I hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by David Cox on January 28, 2009 at 2:22pm

Got it...We have been going through that ourselves. Our school and, as a matter of fact, our district has taken the California standards and boiled them down to "essential" and "non essential" standards. We went through Bloom's but at the end of the day, we usually ended up determining that the "essential" standards were those that were tested more heavily on our CST (California State Standards) Test. I am not sure what your state's standards look like, but that may be a good place to start.

I agree that asking good questions (those higher on Bloom's) would be more beneficial (and more fun to teach) than just the "how are decimals written as percents" type question. In fact, I have been looking for a bank of good questions to ask 7th graders that are aligned to my state's standards.

Are you up for a collaborative effort? We would just need to decide which standards to cover. I am sure that the essential standards in CA are going to be similar to those in other states.

Permalink Reply by Ashley Garner on January 28, 2009 at 3:16pm

I would love to collaborate!! I work at an independent school, so we actually go by National Standards. It's my first year at this school and they previous teacher did not leave me w/ anything to work with. I have to admit, I had never heard of Essential Skills. A colleague turned me on to this Curriculum Map and it's got some great questions! Basically, I'm hoping to build around Numbers & Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, Data Analysis, & Probability. I'm planning to break N & O down into decimals, fractions, percents, integers, and concepts related to these skills.

Attachments:

• mastermap_math_gr7.pdf, 98 KB

Permalink Reply by Kevin Roberts on November 27, 2009 at 12:27am

Attached a document I just created for my 6th grade class. I'm trying to move to a pure standards-based assessment method and listed out the main topics of the year and some essential questions .This is still a draft and work in progress, but may help.

Attachments:

• Assessment Record Sheet.xlsx, 13 KB

Permalink Reply by William Laney on October 4, 2010 at 6:04pm

Ashley... I believe my district has provided us with a list of essential questions for middle-school math. I will compile them and send them on to you.