Essential+Questions

=Essential Questions=

Essential Questions help us steer student learning, getting them to think critically about the world around them. They are not answered. They are invented! = = =Essential Questions :=
 * Have no simple "right" answer; they are meant to be argued
 * Are designed to provoke and sustain student inquiry, while focusing learning and final performances
 * Often address the conceptual or philosophical foundations of a discipline
 * Raise other important questions
 * Naturally and appropriately recur
 * Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking og big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons

=Samples of Essential Questions?= //(Most samples taken from Understanding By Design by [|Grant Wiggins] & [|Jay McTighe])//

Reading

 * Must a story have a moral, heroes, and villians?
 * Must a story have a beginning, a middle, or an end?
 * Why do we read?
 * What makes a great story?
 * How do you "read between the lines"?
 * What do good readers do?

Writing

 * Why do we write?
 * How do authors "hook and hold" readers?
 * How do writers persuade readers?
 * How is spoken language different from written language?
 * Where do ideas for writing come from?
 * What if we didn't have punctuation marks?

Mathematics

 * What would life be like without numbers?
 * How do patterns affect our lives?
 * what determines value?
 * How would our lives be different if we couldn’t tell time?
 * What does it mean to "reason mathematically"?
 * What can patterns reveal?
 * How can numbers or data lie or mislead?
 * When is estimating better than counting and when not?
 * When is the correct answer not the best solution?

Science

 * Is gravity a fact or theory?
 * How are scientific questions answered?
 * How do simple machines help us in daily life?
 * What is the difference between a human and an animal
 * How does weather affect our lives?
 * Do people influence weather changes?
 * How doe we know what to believe in science?
 * How does an ecosystem respond to change?
 * How can we prove cells make up living things?
 * What is healthful living?

Social Studies

 * Is US history a history of progress?
 * When is a law unjust?
 * What is a community?
 * How can studying the lives of others help us to understand them and ourselves better?
 * What can we learn from the past?
 * Is it always true that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it?
 * Who were the "winner" and who were the "losers" in any historical event?
 * How do a region's geography, climate, and natural resources affect the way people live and work?
 * What story do maps and globes tell?
 * What is worth fighting for?
 * What does it mean to be civilized?
 * Who should decide?
 * Is it OK to break the law? If so, when?

**Art**

 * How does art convey feeling or evoke emotion?
 * Where can we find art?
 * What can we learn from studying the art of others?
 * Is one picture worth 1,000 words?
 * What determines art?
 * Should we ever sensor artistic expression?
 * Does art have a message? Should it?

Music

 * How does music convey feeling or evoke emotion?
 * What makes music engaging?
 * What determines music?
 * Should we ever sensor musical expression?
 * Does music have a message? Should it?
 * How are sounds and silences organized in various musical forms?

World Language

 * How does language shape culture?
 * How does culture shape language?
 * Why study another culture?
 * What do I do when my ideas are more complex than my ability to communicate them?
 * How can one express complex ideas using simple terms?
 * What determines a fluent foreigner from a native speaker?