1. Crafting Essential Questions
Traci Blanchard
North Cobb High School
Source: Understanding by Design
by Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins, © 2004

2. Goals
What is an essential question?
How do I write effective ones?

3. An Essential Question is
One that lies at the heart of a subject or a curriculum & promotes inquiry & uncoverage of a subject.

4. Essential Questions Have no simple “right” answer
Provoke & sustain inquiry
Address conceptual or philosophical foundations
Raise other important questions
Naturally & appropriately recur
Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking

5. Examples What is a true friend?
To what extent does art reflect culture or shape it?
Is everything quantifiable?
To what extent is DNA destiny?
In what ways is algebra real and in what ways is it unreal?
To what extent is US history a history of progress?

6. Examples Must heroes be flawless? Who is entitled to own what?
Is the subjunctive necessary?
What makes writing worth reading?
Does practice makes perfect?
What is healthy eating? Healthy living?

7. What makes a question “essential”?
Recurs throughout all our lives
Refers to core ideas & inquiries within a discipline
Helps students effectively inquire and make sense of important but complex ideas, knowledge, know-how
Engages a specific & diverse set of learners

8. Intent, not language, is the key:
Why we pose the question
How students are to tackle it
What learning activities & assessments we expect

9. Types of Essential Questions
Overarching: Frame courses and programs of study around truly big ideas
Topical: Are unit specific but still promote inquiry
GOOD TEACHING USES BOTH!

10. Overarching Essential Questions
More general, broader
Point beyond specific topics or skills
Promote transfer of understanding
One will be used as your pre & post SIP writing prompt

11. Examples of Overarching EQ
Can a fictional story be “true”?
How do a region’s geography, climate, and natural resources affect the way people live and work?
How does technological change influence people’s lives? Society?
How does what we measure influence how we measure?

12. Examples of Overarching EQ
How do we classify the things around us?
Do artists have a responsibility to their audience? To society?
How does language shape culture?
Is pain necessary for progress in athletics?

13. Topical Essential Questions
Unit specific - used to guide individual units
Promote inquiry
Resist simple answers
Require explanation & justification
One per month will be your SIP writing prompt

14. Examples of Topical EQ
How might Congress have better protected minority rights in the 1950s & 1960s?
Should we require DNA samples from every convicted criminal?
Is Holden Caulfield a “phony”?

15. Examples of Topical EQ What is the value of place value?
What is electricity?
How do we hit with greatest power without losing control?

16. THEY CANNOT BE THE FOUNDATION OF OUR CURRICULAR DESIGN.
Leading Questions
Meant to culminate in a fact or completely settled conclusion
No sustained inquiry or argument intended or necessary
Underscores an important point we want students to note
We need these, too, BUT...
THEY CANNOT BE THE FOUNDATION OF OUR CURRICULAR DESIGN.

17. Where to start? Determine the “big ideas”
Georgia Performance Standards
Course texts

18. What are Big Ideas?
Core concepts, principles, theories, & processes that should serve as the focal point of curricula, instruction & assessment.

19. Big Ideas Are important and enduring Are not obvious
May be prone to misunderstanding
Prioritize content
Are transferable
Are the building material of understandings
Manifest in various ways within disciplines
Act as “conceptual velcro”

20. Finding Big Ideas Clarify Content Priorities Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
Big ideas & Enduring Understandings

21. Finding Big Ideas Unpack the GPS Critically analyze the course text
Circle key nouns, adjectives, & verbs
Draft implied or stated big ideas based on those key words.
Critically analyze the course text
Work “backward” to determine what big ideas and/or EQ the text addresses

22. Big Ideas can be Concepts Themes Issues/Debates Problems/Challenges
Processes
Theories
Paradoxes
Assumptions/Perspectives

23. From Big Idea to EQ Use p. 83, Identifying EQ & Understandings
Start with Big Idea
Answer ?s related to Big Idea
Generate EQ & desired understandings

24. Topic or Content Standard
Making the Connection
Big Idea
Topic or Content Standard
Understanding
Essential Question

25. Your task Collaboratively draft ONE overarching EQ for your course
(Sept., Dec.)
Collaboratively draft TWO topical (unit) EQs for your course
(Oct., Nov.)

26. Example
GPS: The learner will be able to read, respond to, and critique historically and culturally significant works of literature in order to understand their importance and relationship to past and present cultures.
Overarching EQ: Does literature primarily reflect culture or shape it?
Topical EQ: What does Romeo & Juliet teach us about Shakespeare’s view of destiny? How does it compare to yours?

27. Where to get more information
Other training sessions--may be department, planning period in-service, and/or Early Release or Cluster Days
Understanding by Design by Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins