Big Ideas provide the conceptual thought lines that anchor a coherent curriculum.

Have no simple “right” answer; they are meant to be argued. 

1. Big Idea - Enduring Understanding
 
To identify Enduring Understanding, 

what do you want the students to take? from this activity for years to come.

An Enduring Understanding is a:

a. BIG IDEA: Unobvious & important inference

b. MORAL OF STORY: Make sense of facts, skills & ideas
c. REQUIRES UNCOVERAGE: not obvious to a novice

Example
Big Idea:
Writing Content
Students will understand that:
• There are many reasons for students to write, including writing-to-learn, writing-
to-demonstrate learning, and writing for authentic purposes and audiences.
• Different forms of writing are appropriate for different purposes and audiences
and have different features (e.g., personal narrative, informational reports/articles,
poetry, response to text).
• To be effective, writing must be a sufficiently developed, coherent unit of
thought to address the needs of the intended audience.
• Writing can be used to make meaning of one’s own experience, as well as of
other information/ ideas.
Guiding questions are questions provided to students, either in writing or spoken verbally,
while they are working on a task. Asking guiding questions allows students to move to higher
levels of thinking by providing more open-ended support that calls students' attention to key
details without being prescriptive.