Table Of Content

Essential QUESTIONS The secret to teaching may be as simple as asking students good questions—and then giving them the opportunity to find the answers. by jeffrey d. wilhelm How do you engage students deeply in investigations and construct their own the content of the curriculum? How do understandings—through traditional kinds you make them hungry for knowledge? of writing as well as through other forms How do you keep them coming back for that express what they’ve learned and more? By asking essential questions. want to communicate. They make plays, In my 31st year of teaching, I can hon- public service announcements, movies, estly say that all of my classes are turbo- museum exhibits, and much more. charged with energy. It wasn’t always this In the field of cognitive science, inquiry way. When I started out, like many teach- is defined as “the rigorous apprentice- ers, I struggled to engage my students. ship into disciplinary ways of knowing,” The difference is, I now use essential and that’s just what it should look like in questions that set the class off on an the classroom. Launching students on an inquiry. Rather than consuming informa- inquiry that matters apprentices them in tion that I distribute and then repeating a way that promotes deep understanding it on a test, students carry out their own and animated learning. 24 SCHOLASTIC INSTRUCTOR HOLIDAY 2012 INS3•E-Quest[24-27]v7ds.indd 24 10/25/12 8:09 AM TIPS FOR REVISING QUESTIONS WHAT IS AN ESSENTIAL TOPIC: Relationships QUESTION? WHAT MAKES A GREAT QUESTION: Where do our ideas An essential question frames about marriage come from? ESSENTIAL QUESTION? a unit of study as a problem PROBLEM: Simple information to be solved. It should connect retrieval students’ lived experiences and Essential questions should… REVISION: What makes a good interests (their only resources relationship? for learning something new) • interest students and matter to disciplinary problems in the to them now and in the future. TOPIC: Civil rights world. And it should connect • help to create enduring under- QUESTION: How did we win the what they learn back to the real standings of the disciplinary fight for civil rights? world, where they can put their new understandings to work. topic under study. PROBLEM: Begs the question Essential questions can be • require students to produce REVISION: What are basic geared toward uncovering meanings and projects and human rights and how can a topic. When my daughter reward them for doing so. they be protected? Jasmine was in first grade, • require students to make she engaged in a habitat unit TOPIC: Survival judgments. framed by the essential ques- QUESTION: Why is it bad that tion What makes a good home? • get to the heart of the matter animals are going extinct? And when elementary (for the topic, text, discipline, PROBLEM: Leading question students are learning about etc.). REVISION: Who survives? characterization, for example, • possess emotive force, as required by the Common intellectual bite, or edginess. TOPIC: Identity Core State Standards, you can QUESTION: Who am I? create a context for an inquiry • be open-ended and arguable. PROBLEM: Too broad and generic with an essential question • be linked to data (that is, as straightforward as What REVISION: Where do I belong? students will learn content makes a good friend? (or student, What makes me me? What and strategies in pursuit of the teacher, leader, hero, etc.). Or shapes my view of the world? inquiry). you could focus on traits with a question like What is courage? • be concise and clearly stated. (or loyalty, maturity, or any other trait). MODEL ESSENTIAL As students go deep into inquiries such as these, they’ll QUESTIONS Science learn the content and processes • Why do organisms die? they need along the way. (My Social Problems/Health • How are we like bacteria? colleague Michael Smith and I give a more comprehensive • Who is hungry and what History/Cultural Values treatment on using inquiry to are the effects of hunger? • Who was/is a great person? teach reading and writing strat- • What does it mean to be A great leader? egies in our book Fresh Takes on healthy? Teaching Literary Elements.) • Who gets power and why? Likewise, you can proceed Language Arts Math from the kind of composing • What is courage? you want students to do. For • What is measurable? example, if you want your class • What is a good • To what degree are to write descriptions, use an relationship? numbers real? essential question like What is a good school? To foster thinking 25 SCHOLASTIC INSTRUCTOR HOLIDAY 2012 INS3•E-Quest[24-27]v7ds.indd 25 10/25/12 8:09 AM ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS about processes, the question could be rephrased as How can we make the best possible school? For comparing and contrasting: What is the difference between a The phrasing of the essential question good and a not-so-good school? The phrasing of the essential organically informs the kinds of learning question organically informs activities and culminating projects students the kinds of learning activities and culminating projects will undertake to answer it.” students will undertake to answer it. important. On parents’ night, ous animals that focused on students inhabited their habi- the setting of their habitats, tats, role-playing the various and wrote informational texts WHAT DOES AN creatures. They interacted with using summary, description, INQUIRY UNIT visitors in character, answering and comparison. questions about what made a The Common Core focuses LOOK LIKE? good home for them. on strategies, the knowledge of Let’s return to the essential how. So does inquiry. Required question framing a unit on strategies can be taught organi- habitat, What makes a good cally as students need them in home? My daughter Jasmine’s their disciplinary work. So my first-grade class started by HOW DOES INQUIRY daughter’s class would learn thinking about homes for GET TO THE HEART how to compose comparisons human beings. They brought OF THE COMMON when they needed to compare in photos of a model home and different habitats, and how to then they wrote descriptions CORE STANDARDS? write a narrative when they of features in the home that Think of where their inquiry needed to write a story to most people would find attrac- into habitat took that first- describe the habitat a lobster, tive. Soon, they expanded their grade class: They read a variety for example, requires to survive scope, reading both narrative of informational and narrative and thrive. and informational picture texts and learned about the In the service of achieving books about homes for lobsters, features of these texts; they usable understandings that can black bears, clams, and other compared what they had be shared with other people, flora and fauna of Maine. They learned about good homes in students learn how to read learned to write interview general and in specific cases. and write, speak and listen, questions and interviewed They created multimodal as Jasmine’s class did in their classroom visitors, including a exhibits of habitats with labels investigations of what makes a wildlife biologist and a science of important features. And good home. professor. through their role-play, they As culminating projects, the even viewed the habitats from students composed alphabet the perspectives of their life- books describing the features forms. These are all strategies WHAT MAKES AN of good homes and created that are emphasized by the habitat exhibits of the crea- Common Core State Standards, ESSENTIAL QUESTION tures they had studied—lob- from elementary through sec- EFFECTIVE? sters, black bears, and other ondary school. life-forms—for a living history Essential questions organi- Researchers have identified museum. The exhibits included cally inspire the kinds of nar- many criteria for composing a labels of essential features, the rative, informational, and good essential question, but I kinds of food sources required persuasive writing required by have found that meeting just by the animals, and anything the Common Core. Jasmine’s three suffices: (1) The question else the students thought class wrote stories about vari- should be interesting and 26 SCHOLASTIC INSTRUCTOR HOLIDAY 2012 INS3•E-Quest[24-27]v7ds.indd 26 10/25/12 8:09 AM compelling to your students ings and strategies as the right now! (2) It should invite real experts in the field. TIPS FOR them into the ongoing disci- GENERATING plinary debates and conversa- A classroom teacher for 15 years, tions that create knowledge Jeffrey D. Wilhelm is a profes- QUESTIONS in the first place. (3) It should sor of education at Boise State require students to learn—and University. He has written or to use—the same understand- cowritten 20 books on literacy. ✹ Identify “big ideas” of unit, concept, or discipline, and turn these into questions. A unit on habitats bmeackoems ea sg ao osdtu hdoym oef ?What B e t h ankful fo r ✹ Reframe a required text, b r and-n a e topic, or standard so it w matters to students: Romeo and Juliet becomes a study of What makes and breaks relationships? ✹ C onsider the heart of the matter: What is the true importance of this curricular topic? Why do you love teaching it? Why is it in the Celebrate curriculum in the first place? 20 years of A unit on narrative becomes Junie B. Jones! Why do people tell stories? ✹ L ook around the community for issues that intersect with the topic. All inquiry connects the present with the past and future, or to put it another way, it connects what we already know to our current reality to possible applications in the future. In my community in Maine, a unit on fish becomes HC: 978-0-375-86841-2 What can we do personally GLB: 978-0-375-96841-9 and globally to protect fish and lobsters? ✹ Ask ethical/moral questions. What should we pursue? What should we 997788--00--337755--8877006633--7 do with the knowledge we GLB:: 997788--00--337755--9706633--4 EL: 978-0-307-97435-8 have? A unit on social issues becomes What is our respon- sibility to others? Ages 6–9 • Check out the newly redesigned website at JunieBJones.com Visit RHTeachersLibrarians.com, your online destination for all the resources you need for your school or library! INS3•E-Quest[24-27]v7ds.indd 27 10/25/12 8:11 AM