QUESTION: How can my students learn more? I need help with essential questions!

[Jen B]

Despite feet of cold snow, I feel like I'm a hot curricular mess. :(
I would like help with creating essential questions for my 6th grade literacy course.
That's the short version.

The long version: over the past four years, I've gone from teaching 6th grade language arts (focus on writing) to teaching blocked literacy classes--focusing on reading, connected with writing. And while I think I'm getting there, I realize I need help. What better forum than thousands of colleagues who may have already been there, done that? ")

I'm working to take the Common Core Standards and 'carve' them into the essential questions for the course. For example:
•What does it mean to be literate?
•How is the human condition depicted through literature?
•What is good writing?

These would be the 'big questions' that guide our work--everything we do would be to answer one (or more) of these questions. I'd take my daily targets, then, from the 'benchmarks' for the common core standards.

Wuddaya think?

I welcome feedback.

[Ryan Goble]

Dr. B, if I may get things started (cough, cough), so first off since you teach literacy, it is probably helpful if, instead of reading and writing you think about essential questions that embrace all 6 language arts - reading, writing, viewing, listening, speaking and representing.  Put more simply critiquing and composing across multimodal texts.

 

I would maybe take a question like "what is good writing?" and make it center on the learner "What can I do to become a better writer? or How will I know if I'm becoming a better writer? Does that make sense. I came across this page this morning and I liked this

Essential Questions . . .

These are questions that touch our hearts and souls.

They are central to our lives. They help to define what it means to be human.

Most of the important thought we will conduct during our lives will center on such essential questions.

What does it mean to be a good friend?
What kind of friend shall I be?
Who will I include in my circle of friends?
How shall I treat my friends?
How do I cope with the loss of a friend?
What can I learn about friends and friendships from the novels we read in school?
How can I be a better friend?

[Jen B]

I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you, too, Ryan. ") Thanks.

The page/chapter from a book you found was excellent.

So, are essential questions a way to 'get at' school pride? I'm not so bold as to post that on our NING . . . yet. ")

[Shirley Durr]

You might want to modify language for 6th graders; I've used the following essential questions for high school students (mostly grades 11 and 12). These are just the questions I remember without looking for them because I often used them (or some version of them) at different times over the years. If I find or think of more that might be useful, I will add them. (Let me know if any one proves useful to you.)

1. How does good writing illuminate our lives?
2. How can what we read influence/impact/reveal our values?
3. In what ways can reading and writing give meaning to our lives?

[Jen B]

thanks, Shirley. I love that 3rd one.

")

[Karen Finter]

Jen-

I think that Ryan is on to something - if our essential questions get too granular- then they really limit our ability to make connections across all of the content areas to those understandings that really are essential or enduring. 

The materials that I have read (Wiggins, McTighe, Erikson) all focus on thinking about the concepts first - boiling down the standards to the big picture concepts that are embedded within them - and then determining what is most important (or essential) about the understanding of those concepts.