In the land of education, what are essential questions (EQs) and why are they so essential, besides their role of permanence on our boards? The guiding part of a lesson that envelops the standards, learning targets, and content, EQs aren’t just handy dandy board decorators, nor are they sentences chosen from a standard game of twenty questions. EQs are by nature a type of generative question whose purpose is to create even more questions and research in the classroom. Not meant to create a set answer, essential questions should excite students and serve as a catalyst for exploring the possibilities of an idea through your content area.
Here are seven characteristics of a good essential question, taken from ASCD. A good essential question:
When we create the EQ, we want to help students connect their outer lives with our curriculum, so try to create your questions to connect their world with the content area. If I’m learning about logos, ethos, and pathos (three elements of effective persuasion), I might ask for the EQ: How do we use our words to manipulate others or change their minds? If I’m talking government and its three branches, the EQ might ask the following: How do we guard against individuals taking advantage of the power they have? It’s not so much about creating a philosophical quandary as much as it is making your content approachable to students in a way that they can ponder its value and engaging to them in a way that they want to know more. When it comes to creating EQs and learning targets (as we’ll discuss a bit later), if we’re drinking the lemonade of instruction, the EQ is the container or glass that organizes all of the individual elements of a lesson such as standards, learning targets, and our content in order to make it have purpose. More later on what it takes to make that instructional lemonade perfectly balanced… Until then, for more information on essential questions and how you can make them even better, visit http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109004/chapters/What-Makes-a-Question-Essential%C2%A2.aspx. or swing by A.E.Beach’s The Coaches’ Corner for one-on-one advice. Keep up the good work Bulldogs! -LDE
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