Essential Questions

1
Essential Questions

• Sandy Stuart-Bayer
• Lees Summit High School

2
Essential Questions

• Are arguable-and important to argue about.
• Are at the heart of the subject.
• Recur--and should recur--in professional work,
  adult life, as well as in the classroom.
• Raise more questionsparent questions that
  produce more questions.
• Often raise important issues.
• Can provide a purpose for learning.

3
Essential Questions

• Are provocative, enticing, and engagingly framed.
  
• Are higher-order, in Bloom's sense they are
  always matters of analysis, synthesis, and
  evaluative judgment. You must go beyond the
  information given.
• Or, in BPA terms, they are Proficient and
  Advanced, never Basic.
• Answers to essential questions cannot be found.
  They must be invented.

4
Essential vs. leading Qs

• Leading
• Asked as a reminder, to prompt recall
• Designed to cover knowledge
• Point to a single, straightforward fact-a
  rhetorical question

• Essential
• Asked to be argued
• Designed to uncover new ideas, views, lines of
  argument
• Set up inquiry, heading to new understandings.

5
Essential Questions

• Essential questions often begin with . .
• Why?
• Which?
• How?
• What if?
• Why do things happen the way they do?
• Which do I select?
• How could things be made better?
• Which is best?
• What if this happened?

6
Essential Questions

• Should require one of the following thought
  processes
• Requires developing a plan or course of action
• OR
• Requires making a decision

7
Essential Questions

• Examples
• Must a story have a moral? A beginning, middle,
  and end? Heroes and villains?
• Is Russia becoming more or less democratic since
  Brezhnev came into power?
• Is geometry more like map-making and using a map,
  or inventing and playing games like chess? Were
  theorems invented or discovered?
• Is prejudice more a view of race or class?
• What makes a family a community?
• Do statistics always lie?

8
Essential Questions

• Examples continued
• Are some aspects of another language and culture
  not understandable by people from other cultures?
  
• Is gravity a fact or a theory? Is evolution a
  scientific law or a theory?
• In what ways are animals human, and in what way
  are humans animals?
• Do mathematical models conceal as much as they
  reveal?
• (From Understanding by Design Curriculum and
  Assessment, pp. 34-35)

9
Related or Supporting Questions

• These are the smaller questions that must be
  answered in order to answer the big, essential
  question.
• They provide background and guide the work.
• They tend to be more topic and subject-specific.

10
Questioning

• For additional information on the importance of
  questioning and the different types of questions
  see
• Jamie McKenzies Questioning Toolbox
• http//fno.org/nov97/toolkit.html or
• The Question IS the Answer
• http//fno.org/oct97/question.html or
• UnderstandingbyDesign Powerpoint

11
But my teacher wants a thesis statement. . .

• If your research assignment is required to have a
  thesis statement, essential questions will help
  you develop it.
• Take a look at this presentation on thesis
  statements from essential questions.

12
To Learn More about Thesis Statements

• Purdue OWLs Thesis or Question
• Joyce Valenzas What is a Thesis?
• Indiana Universitys How to Write a Thesis
  Statement

13
Return to LSHS Research and Problem-Solving Model