2.1: The Three Pillars of a Solid Essential Question
Learning Objective
- Participants will learn the three “pillars” (core text, themes, and skills) of effective essential questions.
Engage
When you think of the pillars that constitute a house, what do you think of? Do roofs, walls, and ceilings come to mind? The 3 pillars that constitute an effective essential question can be compared to the pillars that hold up a house; they are necessary to make the question whole.
Learn
When you are about to write an essential question, there are the 3 things you need to consider:
- What text do I want to teach?
- What theme do I want to explore?
- What skills are necessary for this particular unit?
All three of these pieces are necessary to help you get to your final essential question.
The First Pillar: Texts
Teachers used to design a unit based on one book. This is no longer the case. However, if we are going to be teaching, let’s say, a novel like The Hunger Games, knowing about Katniss and Peeta’s characters, the dystopian genre, the government restrictions, the way that the story moves and the lessons that the story has to teach will all impact the essential question I as the teacher will create. So, while the unit will not only be about The Hunger Games, I as the teacher need to know about The Hunger Games to create an effective essential question that is worth having students explore
The Second Pillar: Themes
The next pillar that holds up an essential question is the themes your texts explore. For the purposes of consistency, I am going to stick with using The Hunger Games as an example. The Hunger Games is a dystopian text, so the themes that are relevant to a dystopian genre will matter when creating an essential question. In your own unit, some questions to consider are...for your text selections, what are some common themes? Is your story about friendship? Love? Hope? Loss? You really need to consider what themes your texts are lending themselves to for your kids to explore.
The Third Pillar: Skills
The last pillar we need to be mindful of when designing an essential question is the skills your unit needs to cover. What skills does this particular unit offer that is unique to the unit? Any great novel can teach conflict or characterization well. Start by asking yourself: Are there any skills that are uniquely possible to teach for this particular text?
Recommended Outside Readings:
- Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understandings Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins
Practice
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Continue to 2.2: The Overlap of the Pillars
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