Essential Questions

The key here is turning standards, goals and outcome statements into question form and then designing assignments and assessments that could resonably provoke satisfactoroy answers. If you can frame your teaching around the questions that gave rise to the content knowledge in the first place then you will escape the trap of activity based surface-level knowledge curriculum. These types of questions often pose dilemmas, uncover assumptions, and challenge over generalizations. They also go to the heart of a discipline and raise other important questions. Essential questions should provoke and sustain student interest as there is usually no obvious one right answer.

Lesson designs and teaching styles should reflect that learning is anchored in questions and often a cycle is set up of questions-answers-questions. As an instructor one of your major goals will be to cause rethinking through appropriate inquiry and performance. This requires a different curriculum design from the old scope and sequence approach that defined discrete knowledge and its transmission.

Tips for Using Essential Questions

Adapted from Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (1998) pg. 29

*Organize programs, courses, units of study and lessons around the questions. Make the content the answers to these essential questions.

*Design assessment tasks that are linked to the questions.

*Use between 2 and 5 questions per unit and prioritize content for students to make the work clearly focus on a few key questions.

*Make the questions as engaging and provocative as possible for your students.

*Be sure that all students know what the questions are and understand why they are valuable.

*Design specific exploratory activities and inquiries for each question.

*Set up the questions for a natural, sequential flow of focus and content.

*Post the overarching questions in the syllabus

*Allow sufficient time for "unpacking" the questions by examining underlying questions and implications. Encourage students to share insights and experiences that relate to these questions.