Essential questions

Essential questions are, ask Grant Wiggins defines, ‘essential’ in the sense of signaling genuine, important and necessarily-ongoing inquiries.” These are grapple-worthy, substantive questions that not only require wrestling with, but are worth wrestling with–that could lead students to some critical insight.

It’s time for a Pop quiz! Which of these is an essential question for the art room? A. How do the arts reflect values in a culture? B. What common symbols are found in the work of the Lascaux cave painters? If you answered A, you are right! The question is provocative, open-ended, and challenging […]

The moment they hear the investigator music start to play in the background, the students rip open the mysterious black box that has caution tape wrapped tightly around the outside. Their hands plunge into the evidence box like archaeologists dive into a treasure chest full of gold. Each student has a proof pamphlet firmly held in their fingertips, almost too close to their goggle-covered eyes. Some read their job description aloud to their peers loud and clear, while others opt to read…

It’s time for a Pop quiz! Which of these is an essential question for the art room? A. How do the arts reflect values in a culture? B. What common symbols are found in the work of the Lascaux cave painters? If you answered A, you are right! The question is provocative, open-ended, and challenging […]

Have you ever tried writing essential questions for your lessons or curriculum? Try using this ready-to-go list of essential questions that integrate the arts and the creative process.

Browse over 50 educational resources created by Christy Howe in the official Teachers Pay Teachers store.

If you look at my original close reading post, you'll see I was basically using the phrase “close reading” to refer to annotation. It took me a year or more to realize that I was saying one buzzwordy thing to mean a lot of explicit, less confusing things that readers do when grappling with a […]

For a long time, English teachers have been teaching in three very specific ways: novel-based, skill-based, and theme-based units. This was how I started my career, too. But then, I learned the power of Essential Questions.

Textual analysis or close reading can be a difficult skill to master. That's where these essential questions come in to help students take their close reading and textual analysis to a deeper level. These five basic questions will help students get to theme analysis in order to craft powerful thesis

This presentation is for use with students who are going to be creating essential questions to guide their research for a project.