As a high school English teacher, I’m always looking for ways to improve my students’ critical thinking and writing skills while keeping engagement high.
Oh, AND I’m always looking for ways to “feel” more organized and together than I really am!
One of the best strategies I’ve found is using essential questions! Yes, yes you’ve defontly heard about them, but exactly what are essential questions?
To me, essential questions are like the unifying thread and links my lessons and texts! Plus, they align with a Universal Design for Learning philosophy.
Keep reading to learn what are essential questions and how you can use them in your classroom. Plus you’ll find my tried and tested essential questions that I have used in my own classroom.
What are essential questions and why are they important in the classroom setting?
At its most basic, an essential question is an open-ended query that encourages students to think further about a topic by raising unanswered questions. This helps stimulate exploration, deep understanding, and conversation around key concepts.
When taught through essential questions, complicated topics can become more expanded and explored more thoroughly because the traditional boundaries of a given subject matter are often pushed or broken down.
In addition to broadening learning opportunities, essential questions also help to build critical thinking skills as well as encourage students to make connections between themselves and the material they’re learning – both of which lead to increased engagement with any assignment.
Using essential questions in the classroom can be an incredibly effective way to challenge students while still enabling them to gain knowledge.
Essential Questions:
- Are open ended and not easy to answer.
- Make you think and use higher order thinking.
- Are Essential, meaning they relate to all humans having a human experience on earth.
- Promotes critical thinking, Often bringing up more questions than answers.
- Align with Inquiry Learning
- Are fun to discuss because of their though provoking nature.
Why are essential questions popular in education right now?
With buzz words like “critical thinking” and phrases such as “21st century skills” floating around in education today, essential questions have quickly become a popular tool for educators around the world.
Essential questions are powerful because they not only guide instruction but also help develop student engagement. Furthermore, by incorporating essential questions into their pedagogy, teachers give students the opportunity to explore various aspects of content learning.
This type of learning encourages adolescents to use higher-order thinking skills and produces more meaningful learning experiences.
As education continues to evolve, essential questions will remain an important part of teaching, providing students with knowledge and challenging them to think beyond just the basics of the material they are studying.
Why do students enjoy discussing big ideas and essential question?
I don’t just want you to know what essential questions are! I want you to understand that kids LOVE them! Seriously, students love to engage in big ideas and discuss these types of questions because they get to explore beyond the concrete, surface-level answers.
- In-depth conversations allow them to connect the material presented in class with the larger context of their lives.
- Questions that challenge their perspective and help them think critically bring excitement and intellectual curiosity to their learning experience.
Essential questions tap into this natural desire by prompting students to push beyond simple answers, engaging their creativity while deepening their understanding.
As they grapple with how different concepts intertwine and how topics relate outside of the classroom, students can find meaning and joy in the discussion which drives their motivation and engagement.
How can teachers use essential questions to engage their students in learning?
As a teacher, one of the most challenging tasks is engaging our students in learning. Essential questions can provide us with an effective tool to do just that!
These types of questions aim to engage students by prompting them to think more deeply about a given concept or topic. They also guide exploration by encouraging students to explore different angles and aspects related to the subject at hand.
I think it is important to do a mini lesson with students that first answers What are essential questions, so they first understand the purpose.
By asking essential questions, we can capture students’ curiosity, provoke thought, challenge preconceived ideas, and bring meaning to learning.
With these types of questions, teachers have the opportunity to not only assess their students understanding but also encourage them to uncover new information and sharpen their inquiry skills.
Whether it be in the classroom or virtually, essential questions can ignite conversation and foster creativity among your student body!
Tips for creating effective essential questions
Okay, so I’ve answered “What are essential questions?”, and explained why students love them! Now, these are my tips for designing and curating questions that align with your units and lessons.
- When working on creating essential questions, it’s important to remember that they should summarize the overall concept of what students should learn within a unit and help focus the learning goals.
- Effective essential questions should challenge students’ prior knowledge and require them to think critically so that the goal of really mastering the material is achieved.
- Write clear questions that link directly to specific content, and use language that all members of the class are familiar with.
- Consider binary and opposite language. for example, “Why is love so complicated” the opposite words here being “love” and “complicated”
Ultimately, teacher effort put towards thoughtfully constructing well-written essential questions truly pays off by promoting engagement and success in their classrooms!
Examples of essential questions that have been successful in my classroom
- How does context influence an individual?
- Why is love so complicated?
- What paradoxes exist in life?
- What makes a community strong?
- How do we determine what is right and what is wrong?
- How can humans be civilized and barbaric at the same time?
- How do people change and grow?
One of my favourite resources has been this giant list of essential questions from Teach Thought – I reference it every semester!
Essential questions in the classroom help to engage students in meaningful conversations and create an atmosphere of deeper learning.
Along with careful crafting, their ability to open up a conversation and inspire students to explore certain topics can be incredibly advantageous.
Essentially, essential questions provide students with insight into intriguing ideas, as well as the opportunity to develop their own opinions and theories on such points. Gratefully, teachers now have many great examples of essential questions that have been used in classrooms very successfully.
Now that you know exactly what are essential questions, you can jump to the next step and start sprinkling them into your daily class discussion!
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Carley 📚 Teacher Author @ Visual Thinking Classroom
B.A., B.Ed., Graduate Certificate in Teacher Librarianship // carley@visualthinkingclassroom.com
