 Welcome to a conversation on how to make your questions essential. I'm Deb Ragi, professional development coordinator at ESU-8 in Newly, Nebraska, and I will be leading you through this conversation. The work that I'm going to be sharing with you today is the research of Grant Wiggins and Denise Wolver, and I'd like to start with a quote from their work. Quote, the well-known antherism that quote writing is revision, unquote, applies particularly well to crafting essential questions. With more than 30 years experience in teaching through questions and helping educators create great unit framing queries, we've repeatedly seen the wisdom of this saying. A quick definition of revision and writing is taking out and putting in whatever makes the writing piece that you have stronger and have better purpose and better meaning and better relationship to the reader. So that applies very well with essential questions. Before we go much further, I really believe we need to have a definition of what makes a question essential. As it says here on the slide, essential questions foster the kinds of inquiries, discussions, and reflections that help learners find meaning in their learning, achieve deeper thought in their processes, and better quality within their work. There are eight criteria for essential questions. Those criteria are to stimulate ongoing thinking and inquiry. They are arguable with multiple plausible answers. They raise further questions. They spark discussion and debate. They demand evidence and reasoning because of varying answers exist. They point to big ideas and pressing issues. They are fruitfully recurring throughout the unit or the year. The answers proposed are tentative and may change in light of new experiences in deeper understanding. These are for examples of good essential questions. What makes them good essential questions is that they meet all of the criteria that I just shared with you. They are all convergent in their low-level question design. I told you the wrong thing. I'm sorry. I did not tell you the wrong thing because these are examples of good essential questions. Let me read them to you. To what extent does where you live influence how you live? What should we make of outliers, errors, anomaly, or insight? What should our diet and wellness plans be in a world of constantly changing advice from experts? These are common first draft questions that you might have. As I read through these questions, I saw myself writing these questions, just as well as any other instructor might. It's not as skilled in the writing of essential questions. Those questions are how do good readers use strategies to understand tests? What's the value of chemistry? What were the three major causes of World War I? Why do earthquakes happen? These questions felt to meet the suggested criteria I shared with you earlier. They're all convergent, low-level questions designed to support content acquisition. They either point towards the one official right answer or they elicit near lists and there are no other further inquiries that are necessary from the student to provide to the teacher or the teacher to provide to the student. Now, what we're seeing here might be essentially first drafts. It's first drafts of essential questions which are likely to be too fact-focused. We need to assure that subsequent drafts better meet the criteria that criteria is shared. In order to make sure that our questions meet the eight criteria, Wiggins and Wilbur have seven ways to hone your question. The first way is how well does the draft question meet the criteria. Let's go back out here. Remember, these are our essential question criteria, all those eight that I shared with you. They say that writers of essential questions need to develop the discipline of pausing or of setting aside or of just not completing at one time or in order to deliberately assess their questions against specific. Writers of essential questions need to develop the discipline of pausing to deliberately self-assess their questions against specific criteria. In this case, the eight criteria I shared with you earlier. I'm going to show you an example, a non-example of an essential question. It's how do good readers use strategies to understand text? The question is leading. It merely aims to remind students of the question and it asks for recall, not inquiry. Now here is an example written of the non-example using the essential question criteria. By putting the question in this manner, the student must think about all the possible moves and determine which to use in each stuck situation that they become into. With each of the seven ways to hone your questions, Wiggins and Wilbur also offer some tips. Now the tips are going to be at the bottom of each of the seven ways. Now you can have access to the tips and any of the resources that I share by downloading the PowerPoint which is also available to you at the ESU Wednesday webinar website. Now the tip here for the first way is how well does it meet the criteria is that if you have students generalize their answers, it helps them to become self-regulated learners because the generalizations that they draw facilitate transfer. You want them to transfer this. For instance, the strategies they would use. What strategies do you use to read science material? What strategies for social studies material? What strategies do you use for reading any research or an article? All of those kinds of things. You want them to transfer what they know and are able to do. The second way to hone your questions is outlined here. If the question is too divergent or too convergent and that means it's too similar in its characteristics, how can I phrase it to invite inquiry and argument? If the question is factual, what question on the same topic is worth arguing about? Now we typically find debates not in the content itself but in the discussions of its value, its importance, and its applicability. Now I'm going to take a sports view on this and I'm going to give you an example using soccer for instance. It says that there's no argument about how to kick a soccer ball with the instep of your foot but there are endless debates about when to shoot, when to pass, or when to dribble. The non-example that I have for you on this inviting inquiry is this question right here. What is proper punctuation and why is it so important? Now I think you have to agree with me that there's little argument about the first half of the question and that the second half seems to limit rather than to expand the inquiry. Let's look at the example when it's written as an essential question. When is it proper punctuation mandatory and when is it optional? That really opens it up. It invites inquiry and argument. It actually asks you what are the facts about how, when is it mandatory and when is it optional? It gives it more depth and more body, more realism. The tip that they give here is that you rephrase a draft question using sentence stems and there are some sentence stems which are below here. I want to share with you a t-chart for your questions. The non-example was a factual question and the example was an essential question. What I've done here with this t-chart is that I have used what we teach about Columbus and his exploration of the Americas and I've written down my fact questions. The first one there is named Columbus's Three Ships and the second one is why did this crew consider mutiny? Well I transformed them into essential questions so that they meet the eight criteria or many or most of the eight criteria. Now from named Columbus's Three Ships I've rewritten that question in this manner. How important was it Columbus's expedition be made up of three ships? Now it gets into the the naming of the ships because each one of those ships had a different function and there were different reasons that the ships came along and it allows students to dig deeper into it, into their thoughts, into the beliefs, into the research, into the actual historical documents that talk about why it was important that there be three ships on this on this expedition. Now when we consider why did the crew consider mutiny well that isn't it could be more of an opinion it it can't it may have some facts to it but it's just a listing of everything. If we take the essential question written to that this is what were some of the motives behind Columbus's crew to mutiny? When we talk about the motives rather than why they did it we already know that they they were considering it but what were the motives and that'll cause again some inquiry it causes them to have some arguments about what was happening or what wasn't happening within the crew and all of those opportunities. Now if you notice down in the lower left-hand corner I have a link there and again that link will give you lead you to a PowerPoint that has more STEM question lead-ins more resources for you. Again remember if you download the PowerPoint you have access to all of my resources. Now we need to consider the third way to hone your essential questions. This says is the question merely engaging or will pursuing it lead you to the topics big idea? Was it simply grab you or will it lead you to the big idea? You know to engage students some teachers frame an essential question that goes off on a tangent and that might be that they might do something it really doesn't connect to the learning that they want to have or the objective that they want to want to accomplish for the day it's merely something that's fun something that might reach the students but it doesn't help them connect to the learning. But a good question has to be more than just intriguing. The best essential questions are literally of the essence of the essence of the big idea they take you to the core issues in the insights of the topic. Now let's look at a couple of non examples. I have a science and I have a math and the science one has to do with crustaceans. If you don't remember what crustaceans are, crustaceans are like lobsters and crabs and those types of sea animals. And look here at the question that goes off of the tangent is the first example it says well what's up with them? Well if the students know what a crustacean is and what's up with them it really it doesn't ask you ask them to get to the the big idea or the objective for the day to even start thinking about that. And then the other question that's asked there what is a good bug? I have you really talked about the idea that crustaceans are actually part of the insect family. How does that get to the big idea? It actually makes students think in other ways because we've really haven't talked a whole lot about the idea that lobsters and crabs and so on are crustaceans that they are bugs. They only take the core issues in the insights of the topic they don't take anything else. When we consider the math question where do we find examples of law in the real world not only it doesn't get to the core issues the insights of the topic. Actually this is a geometry question and when we're talking about shapes in the real world it just asks for a listing of where they are. So if you take it to an example of an essential question in it reads like this how much and in what ways would we most miss similar figures if they didn't exist? In other words what impact would it have upon us? What might be happening? What might not be happening? What might have been invented? What might have been used? What might have not been used? It just offers and opens it so much wire so that you can actually lead to the big idea or the objective of the day. It's an intriguing and it's an argumentable question. It also goes deep into math and it opens up an exploration of other geometries just beside Euclidean geometry. And the way that the tip that they offer here is using concept maps. Now I don't know if you've ever used concept maps. Maybe you've had your students use concept maps but have you ever used concept maps in order to formulate your question? You know concept maps sometimes are called mind maps and they're very powerful because they make your questions more pointed to the objectives that you or the big ideas that you've identified. This is a suggestion of a mind map of a mind map or a concept map of a concept map. You have how you create a concept map is the concept that we're working with and the first ring around the outside or the first bubble of each color are the concepts that you want to bring home or you want to objectives that you want your students to be able to know and be able to do and then stemming from each of those knows and do's are the various activities or the various learnings that you want them to have about the main concept that you're trying to teach your students. Many times as teachers we create these concepts or mind maps in our mind but as we're practicing and honing the creation and the implementation of essential questions with our students we need to take the time to map out or actually create the map. Practice practice practice is very very important. Idea four to hone your question essential questions creation is is the question general enough to use across other units or is it bound to narrowly to just this topic. Now this really speaks to that is what they're learning here applyable to what they're learning there. The best example that I can think of right here and then I've experienced myself and I know you have too. The students write a research paper in English class the students write a research paper or a question paper in social studies or science. Now they have to transfer their English skills their English writing skills all of those domains that have to be a part of that in order to be deemed as successful as a writing piece and they don't students don't always transfer what they learn in English to what they're going to write and do in a structure in either the social studies or the science research paper. Everything has to be able to be moved across. What we learn in mathematics about the use of equations we also need to be able to transfer that knowledge into chemistry and physics so that we can it don't it makes sense. You don't want it too narrow so that it only applies here you want everything to work together. Now for instance the examples I gave you before were just a little bit more far fetch but if you can focus on this in literature here we have this question which is a factual question no matter how to frog and toad act like friends and then the social studies question why did we fight in Vietnam and was it worth it. Now let's look at the examples that are written in the central question style. The literature question has been transposed into this who is a true friend and the social studies question into why have we gone to war when was it wise and when was it foolish. By revising the questions particularly let's look at the literature question to who is a true friend we can connect to very texts and to our own personal experience in addition to making us question the question what do we mean by true friend this revised query recurs over and over and over again throughout our lives what do we mean by a true friend you know we find this in history we find this in psychology as well as in literacy who is a true friend but when we look and when we look at the social studies two questions it sets a more helpful agenda for a history course why have we gone to war when was it wise when was it foolish we we have a tendency to want to study things in silos or in isolation how can we bring all of that learning together so that we can learn the lessons of why we have gone to war when was it wise and when was it foolish the tips that Wiggins and Wilbur offer to us right here is avoid mentioning or entering out specific topic in the question keep it pretty general don't be specific about books or events or anything make those questions overarching in other words and then you can underneath like when you're doing your your concept map your mind map you can get to those specifically to vietnam war and wasn't worth it but what are the overarching overarching now we're going to move on to what is the essential fifth essential way to hone your questions here it says does the question get at what's odd counterintuitive or easily misunderstood or is it a predictable question with mundane and relatively superficial answers let's talk a little bit about what's odd counterintuitive or easily misunderstood there are common misinterpretations or misconceptions are rich resource for for such questions when we look at our non-examples here they have did they're pretty flat they don't have any robust to them it says what's the difference between fiction and nonfiction is simple p-chart would satisfy the answer there and what's a theory in science that's a definition what is history that's a definition and what can numbers help us do that's a listing again there so if we translate those into essential questions the fiction not fiction question comes when is fiction revealing and when is it a lie interesting huh let's talk about the theory and science if we can't see something gravity human evolution dinosaurs and so on how do we know it is or was there interesting proposal when considering the history question if history is the story told by the winners what stories aren't we hearing nice twist isn't it there are a lot of things that happen in history that were only told the winners side what happened to those that were the losers and the last question about numbers why can't the language of numbers communicate I said that wrong it should be what can't the language of numerous numbers communicate why ask for a listing what asks for a thinking so that's important that that question be what can't the language of numbers communicate you need to familiarize yourself in the tip it says with the most counterintuitive and most commonly under misunderstood aspects of the subject or the subjects that you teach now what I have done here is I went out to Google and I put in the search just common student misconceptions you can refine this all the way down they will give you just all kinds of answers on this but look where the orange arrow is in 5.3 seconds I got 10,200,000 results about common student misconceptions we need to know what they have wrong in their brain so we can help them get it fixed in their understanding and their depth of knowledge and their application not so much fixed as to get it more solid to get it get them on the right track so that they don't have those misconceptions so please consider researching the common student misconceptions of your subject or of what you're about to teach you need to build your questions around those misconceptions so you can clear them up so students can continue what they're learning the sixth way to hone your essential questions is to ask this question am I trying too hard to craft the perfect question it's very very simple uh that we have the don't try to write the one ideal question on the first try don't spend too much time word smirking the question these are the golden nuts of this particular slide we often see question writers trying to create the one ideal question on the first try we want numerous and diverse areas we often see question writers trying to create the one ideal question on the first try we want numerous and diverse ideas at first jotted down quickly from which one will emerge that's where that t chart comes in jot down the factuals that you want the problem is compounded when writers spend too much time word smithing that question instead of trying to generate the best intellectual direction that you want that question to take your students as to the big ideas or the objective of the day don't try to write and edit simultaneously um draft a bunch of questions first then edit the more versions you draft the easier the editing editing will be I did that with my t chart on columbus I wrote down those two facts first then I came back and I started with one of the question stems and that's where I made my decision on how what direction that question was going to take or how I was going to move that into an essential question using the eight criteria here we go ask yourself what am I trying to say to who am I trying to say it what I want my readers to leave what they're be ready to do after reading this maybe you use all the questions maybe you won't don't be disappointed if you don't it's all part of teaching our students and reaching our students so that they truly are using all of their skills not just the rote skills all of their skills in their learning the seventh and the last way to hone your uh questions is to look at this question am I looking for questions in all the wrong places seems pretty simple sounds almost like a country song doesn't it but this quote from the research of wiggins and wilbur really is important essential questions are a design move intended to make it more likely that the work in the talk gets beyond low level coverage we want to move up blooms taxonomy we want to move um further around in any of those taxonomies we want to get to the higher levels of thinking doing and being by committing to essential questions as a framing approach you know you're planning for inquiry and argument as a priority outcome essential questions aren't a teaching move they are an inquiry in an argument uh planning for in other words it's stimulation it's moving it forward so you want to make sure to aim for understanding is as this this comes to it says is to aim for three kinds of learning you want acquisition you want meaning making and you want transfer so in order to get acquisition meaning making and transfer you have to build them into your lessons you have to use various forms or other forms other than just teacher student interaction um I have gone out and uh collected some resources for you on uh socratic uh seminar so you see there's a definition and a strategy there there's also a youtube that shows it in action I have uh you want to consider using formal debate um there's a brief introduction for the beginners and a student handout now remember debate isn't only for speech it isn't only for the debate team debate it can be as formal or informal as you want it to be but remember that in debate you are able to support your positions with more than just feeling or feeling tone and the last uh is problem-based learning um here's a study guide and a strategies for that and also I've included a youtube here uh on uh what problem-based learning actually is to help you get a better picture and a better view of that well there's a bottom line to essential question you have to get in the habit of always critiquing the essential questions that you draft they're not done the first time look at them again look at them again remember the t format that will help you very much we need to remember that high-level inquiries and questioning yield some of the greatest gains for our students as well as better engagement you know that happens at this statement also talks about conventional tests it's it can be both formative and summative tests that you give of their achievement they'll do better on their chapter tests on their quizzes on their l to j if you're using that's a particular strategy of testing achievement on your norm reference tests such as map or ac t or as the compass test all of those types of tests you will get the greatest gains if you as a teacher are helping your students dig deeper into their knowing and doing by using essential questions and above all remember getting the question right takes discipline skill and artfulness practice practice practice but this is the biggest nugget I can give to you it's well worth the effort to ensure that students tackle inquiries that are important in treating and revealing decide what the essential learnings are decide what the essential questions have to be about those essential learnings what are the targets what are the objectives what are the big ideas ensure that they tackle those inquiries ensure that well I thank you for being with me for this conversation on essential questions I invite you again and remind you that the PowerPoint is also available to you at the Wednesday webinar site again in you download the PowerPoint you will have direct clickable access to all of the additional materials that I found and would love to share with you thank you