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?