Define Essential Question

Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School

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How could the use of high quality, overarching essential questions change the way my students approach learning? Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School

Students learn most effectively when they know the goals or objectives of a specific lesson or learning activity. This makes intuitive sense. If students are aware of an intended outcome, they know what to focus on. When setting objectives, the teacher simply gives students a target for their learning. However, objectives can be written in a number of formats and used in different ways.

Robert J. Marzano Classroom Instruction that Works

Define Essential Question: Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School Traits of an Essential Question

 Probes a matter of considerable importance

 What is the relationship between freedom and responsibility?  How do beliefs, ethics, or values influence different people's behavior?

 Requires  movement beyond understanding and studying  some kind of action or resolve  the making of a choice or the forming of a decision

 In the face of adversity, what causes some people to prevail while others fail?

 Shifts and evolves with time and changing conditions

 What are the most dramatic contributions made to the quality of life by chemical products? What are the most damaging impacts of chemical products?

 May be unanswerable in the ultimate sense

 Does art reflect culture or shape it?

 May frustrate the researcher

 How do we overcome prejudice and bias?  What is the price of progress?

 Is Deliberately thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and/or controversial

 Should people sacrifice freedom in the interest of security?

 Requires students to draw upon content knowledge and personal experience

 How do values and beliefs change over time?  What is the American Dream and to what extent is it achievable for all Americans?

 Can be revisited throughout the unit to engage students in evolving dialogue and debate

 How can linear relationships be used to make decisions?

 Leads to other “essential” questions posed by students

 In a culture where we are bombarded with other people trying to define us, how do we make decisions for ourselves? Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School The Six Facets of Understanding OVERARCHING EQ: Question that drives instruction, combining prior knowledge, instruction, new knowledge, and personal experiences.

 Explanation: Question whose answer requires accurate explaining theories and knowledge.  Interpretation: Question whose answer requires interpreting concepts to prove understanding.  Application: Question whose answer requires using knowledge in a new situation or diverse context.  Perspective: Question whose answer requires shifting critical points of view.  Empathy: Question whose answer requires identifying with another person’s feelings and worldview.  Self-Knowledge: Question whose answer requires using wisdom of one’s own ignorance and/or pattern of thought to prove understanding.

OVERARCHING EQ: What is the relationship between conflict and change?

 Explanation: How does conflict lead to change?  Interpretation: How does conflict influence a person's decisions and actions?  Application: What problem-solving strategies can people use to manage conflict and change?  Perspective: How does a person's point of view affect how they deal with conflict or change?  Empathy: How might it feel to live through a conflict that disrupts your way of life?  Self-knowledge: What personal qualities have helped you to deal with conflict and change? From The Understanding by Design Handbook by Wiggins and McTighe. Student-Generated Essential Questions

Overarching EQ: What effects do media have on our world/ on me as an individual?

1. What is the difference between hearing something on the radio and seeing something visually on TV? How does that affect the way people interpret their information? 2. How is the news affected depending on what region it is coming from, and what things are left out or added? 3. How do different media sources treat bias? Do they stay neutral, do they support personal opinions, or are they forced to take sides? Is it even possible to stay neutral? 4. What are the differences in the ways teenagers get their news and adults get their news? What is the best way for me to get my news? 5. What are the specific aspects of advertising that make products more appealing? Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School 6. How is the expansion of American media and the advertisement beneficial to the world around us? The “Honeycomb” (a.k.a. the Six Facets of Understanding)

Explanation Question:

Interpretation Question: Application Question: What is meant by a balanced diet? What does the popularity of What could we serve as fast foods say about modern healthy but tasty snacks for life in the United States? a class party?

N U T R I T Empathy Question: I Perspective Question: O N Do the food pyramid How might it feel to live guidelines apply in other with a dietary restriction regions, such as the Middle caused by a medical East, Asia, and Antarctica? condition? To what extent are you a healthy eater?

Self-Knowledge Question:

Cheat Sheet: Explanation: Question whose answer requires accurate explaining theories and knowledge. Interpretation: Question whose answer requires interpreting concepts to prove understanding. Application: Question whose answer requires using knowledge in a new situation or diverse context. Perspective: Question whose answer requires shifting critical points of view. Empathy: Question whose answer requires identifying with another person’s feelings and worldview. Self-Knowledge: Question whose answer requires using wisdom of one’s own ignorance and/or pattern of thought to prove understanding. Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School The “Honeycomb” (a.k.a. the Six Facets of Understanding)

Explanation Question:

Interpretation Question: Application Question:

T O P Empathy Question: I Perspective Question: C

Self-Knowledge Question:

Cheat Sheet: Explanation: Question whose answer requires accurate explaining theories and knowledge. Interpretation: Question whose answer requires interpreting concepts to prove understanding. Application: Question whose answer requires using knowledge in a new situation or diverse context. Perspective: Question whose answer requires shifting critical points of view. Empathy: Question whose answer requires identifying with another person’s feelings and worldview. Self-Knowledge: Question whose answer requires using wisdom of one’s own ignorance and/or pattern of thought to prove understanding. Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School

What is an Essential Question? By: Grant Wiggins November 15, 2007

What is an essential question? An essential question is – well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter – the essence of the issue. Think of questions in your life that fit this definition – but don’t just yet think about it like a teacher; consider the question as a thoughtful adult. What kinds of questions come to mind? What is a question that any thoughtful and intellectually-alive person ponders and should keep pondering?

In Understanding by Design we remind readers that “essential” has a few different connotations:

One meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable – What is justice? Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry? Is science compatible with religion? Is an author’s view privileged in determining the meaning of a text?

We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional. In other words, we are liable to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and that such changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial. A good education is grounded in such life- long questions, even if we sometimes lose sight of them while focusing on content mastery. The big-idea questions signal that education is not just about learning “the answer” but about learning how to learn.

A second connotation for “essential” refers to key inquiries within a discipline. Essential questions in this sense are those that point to the big ideas of a subject Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School and to the frontiers of technical knowledge. They are historically important and very much “alive” in the field. “What is healthful eating?” engenders lively debate among nutritionists, physicians, diet promoters, and the general public. “Is any history capable of escaping the social and personal history of its writers?” has been widely and heatedly debated among scholars for the past fifty years, and compels novices and experts alike to ponder potential bias in any historical narrative.

There is a third important connotation for the term “essential” that refers to what is needed for learning core content. In this sense, a question can be considered essential when it helps students make sense of important but complicated ideas, knowledge, and know-how – findings that may be understood by experts, but not yet grasped or seen as valuable by the learner. In what ways does light act wave-like? How do the best writers hook and hold their readers? What models best describe a business cycle?

By actively exploring such questions, the learner is helped to arrive at important understandings as well as greater coherence in their content knowledge and skill.

A question is essential when it:

1. causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content; 2. provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions; 3. requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers; 4. stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons; 5. sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences; Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School 6. naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

Here is a variety of subject-area examples of such questions: How well can fiction reveal truth?

 Why did that particular species/culture/person thrive and that other one barely survive or die?

 How does what we measure influence how we measure? How does how we measure influence what we measure?

 Is there really a difference between a cultural generalization and a stereotype?

 How should this be modeled? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this model? (science, math, social sciences)

Note that an essential question is different from many of the questions teachers typically ask students in class. The most commonly asked question type is factual – a question that seeks “the” correct answer. For example, in a history class, teachers are constantly asking questions to elicit recall or attention to some important content knowledge: “When did the war break out? Who was President at the time? Why, according to the text, did Congress pass that bill?” Such questions are clearly not “essential” in the sense discussed above. Rather, they are what we might call ‘teacherly’ questions – a question essential to a teacher who wants students to know an important answer.

Is such a leading question bad? No. There are all sorts of good pedagogical reasons for using a question format to underscore knowledge or to call attention to a forgotten or overlooked idea. But those questions are not “essential” in the sense of signaling genuine, important and necessarily-ongoing inquiries. Teachers have to be careful not to conflate two ideas: “essential to me in my role as a teacher” and “essential to anyone as a thinking person and inquiring student for making meaning of facts in this subject.” Generating Essential Questions December 10, 2008 Northview Middle School

For Further Reading

“The Spirit of Inquiry” by Eric Cook http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso? artid=56

“What is the Big Idea?” by Grant Wiggins http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso? artid=43

“Enduring Questions, Why Ask Them?” by Eric Cook http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso? artid=79

“Teaching Critical Thinking: The Believing Game and the Doubting Game” by Alan Shapiro http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso? artid=86

Other Resources http://www.fno.org/sept96/questions.html http://www.myprojectpages.com/support/ess_questpopup.htm http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/612/essential %20questions/Index.htm http://questioning.org/mar05/essential.html http://www.spa3.k12.sc.us/essentialquest.htm http://www.tnellen.com/alt/essential.html http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso? artId=53