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Essential Questions

Discover the power of essential questions in education. Learn how they help teachers focus on important topics and engage students in meaningful learning across subject areas.

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Essential Questions

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  1. Essential Questions What Are Essential Questions? How Do They Help Teachers? How Do They Help Students?

  2. What are Essential Questions? Essential Questions guide a unit of study These Questions: • Reflect conceptual priorities • Go to the heart of the discipline • Recur naturally • Raise important questions across content areas • Have no one obvious “right” answer • Are framed to provoke student interest

  3. What is the difference between Essential and Unit Questions? • Essential Questions: • Are broad in scope • Provide bridges between disciplines and units of study • Usually have no right answer Example: How does conflict produce change? • Unit Questions: • Are tied to a specific topic or unit of study • Support and continue the study of an Essential Question Examples: How does stress on the environment impact evolution? How were changes in economics a factor in the Civil War? In the story, Charlotte’s Web, how do the animals’ different abilities help Wilbur survive and succeed?

  4. Why Use Essential Questions? To target higher-level thinking skills • To require comparison, synthesis, interpretation, evaluation, etc. To ensure student projects are compelling and engaging • To require more than a simple restatement of facts To focus on important topics • To connect learning to other disciplines and other topics of study • To ask questions that have been asked throughout human history • To address compelling questions that students ask

  5. How Do Essential Questions Help Teachers? They help teachers focus on important topics in their year-long curriculum and bring meaning across subject areas: • They raise important questions across content areas (Math, Science, Literature, History, etc.). • They center around major issues, problems, concerns, interests, or themes that also occur in other units.

  6. How Do Essential Questions Help Students? They help to engage students: • Essential Questions bring meaning and focus to the study of events and topics throughout a project or course, which otherwise may seem arbitrary or unrelated. • They help students compare, contrast, and make analogies. • Questions are relevant, compelling, interesting, and are written in age-appropriate, student language.

  7. How Do Essential Questions Help Students? • They engage students’ imagination and connect the subject with their own experiences and ideas. They help to engage students: • There is no one, obvious “right” answer, so students are challenged to explore many possibilities. • They encourage in-depth discussion and research, and set the stage for further questioning.

  8. What is an Essential Question? …And what is not? Click here to see how a team of teachers can use one Essential Question

  9. How do Unit Questions Support Essential Questions?

  10. How are Essential and Unit Questions Related to Curriculum Frameworks?

  11. How are Essential and Unit Questions Related to Curriculum Frameworks?

  12. What Are Some Tips for Developing Essential Questions? • Just start…don’t worry about the mechanics and language. Focus on brainstorming. • Think about the questions your students ask each time you teach this unit, and focus on what they find most fascinating. • Determine what you want your students to remember from this Unit in five years. • You may want to write your question as a statement first, and then revise it into a question. • If needed, write the questions in adult language to capture the essential understandings, then rewrite in “kid” language. • Keep asking the question students ask: “So what?”

  13. What Are Some Tips for Developing Essential Questions? • After your brainstorming, share your questions with several colleagues and gather other ideas for revising your questions. • Continue to revisit and improve questions throughout the creation of your Unit Portfolio.

  14. Unit Questions Unit Questions Unit Questions Essential Question How can Different Unit Questions Support a Single Essential Question? • Unit Questions asked in one course of study can explore different facets of an Essential Question. • Teams of teachers from different disciplines can use their own unique Unit Questions to support one common, unifying Essential Question.

  15. Essential Question How can Different Unit Questions Support a Single Essential Question? Social Studies Unit Question: How does war create change in the economy? • Language Arts Unit Questions: • In Lord of the Flies, how do the characters respond to conflict? • How does Lord of the Flies help us to understand our complex human nature? Science Unit Question: How do animals adapt to a changing environment? How does conflict product change?

  16. How can Different Unit Questions Support a Single Essential Question? • Unit Questions targeting different age groups can support an over-arching Essential Question that is developed across grade levels. • For example, Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Massachusetts uses school-wide Essential Questions where coursework across all grade levels (7-12) focuses on one Essential Question: • What is community? [1995–96] • What is change? [1996–97] • What is balance? [1997–98] • Where are the patterns? [1998–99] • What's the limit? [1999–2000] • What really matters? [2000-2001] • Where's the truth? [2001-2002] http://www.parker.org/curriculum/essential_questions.htm

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