Tip: Start by making a concept web
for the topics of the unit. Identify the
hard-to-understand but vital connections of ideas. Make sure your
question points to the ideas identified,
suggests interesting inquiries, and
helps uncover the powerful ideas. Ask
yourself, What does this idea help us
make sense of? How does it help us
connect the dots of our learning?
4. Is the question general enough to use
across other units? Or is it bound too
narrowly to just this topic or text?
We want a question that rewards us
for revisiting it. Here’s a draft question,
based on a reading of one of the stories
in Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad
series: How do Frog and Toad act like
friends? By revising the question to
this—Who is a true friend?—we can
connect to varied texts and to personal
experience. In addition to making us
question the question—What do we
mean by true friend?—this revised
query recurs over and over throughout
our lives, in history and psychology
as well as in literature. The genius of
Lobel is that Frog and Toad sometimes
don’t act like friends, which deepens
the inquiry.
Here’s another example showing
the virtue of a more general focus. The
question, Why did we fight in Vietnam,
and was it worth it? sets a more helpful
agenda for a history course when we
revise it to read, Why have we gone to
war? When was it wise, and when was it
foolish?
Tip: Avoid mentioning or edit out
the specific topic in the question.
Don’t mention specific books, events,
or facts. Instead, pose the question
more generally about concepts such
as friendship, war, ecosystems, and
so on. We call such questions overarching (Mc Tighe & Wiggins, 2013;
Wiggins & Mc Tighe, 2005, 2013).
5. Does the question get at what’s
odd, counterintuitive, or easily mis
understood? Or is it a predictable
question with mundane and relatively
superficial answers?
Here are some common first-draft
questions: What’s the difference
between fiction and nonfiction? What’s
a theory in science? What is history?
What can numbers help us do? These
questions don’t lead us very far. They
call attention to key ideas, but they
don’t promote in-depth inquiry.
And frankly, they’re a bit dull and
“teacherly.”
By contrast, successful questions
do just the opposite: They highlight
apparent paradoxes or counter-
intuitive investigations. Here are those
“teacherly” questions revised: When is
fiction revealing, and when is it a lie? If
we can’t see something (gravity, human
evolution, dinosaurs, and so on), how do
we know it is or was there? If history
is the story told by the winners, what
stories aren’t we hearing? What can’t the
language of numbers communicate?
Misconceptions are a rich resource
for such questions. For example, a
common misconception in physics
is the assumption that a ball thrown
in the air has two forces acting on it
once it leaves the hand: the force from
the hand pushing it up and the force
of gravity pulling it down. Actually,
there’s only one force acting on the
ball: the force of gravity. So, a devilishly simple essential question would
be, Why does the ball move that way?
Not only will you generate interesting and diverse theories, but you’ll
uncover misunderstandings.
Tip: Familiarize yourself with the
most counterintuitive and commonly
misunderstood aspects of the subjects
you teach, and build your questions
around them. There are countless
websites on common student misconceptions for all academic subjects.
Simply search for “student misconceptions in ____” in your web browser.
6. Am I trying too hard to craft the
perfect question?
We often see question writers trying
hard to create the one ideal question
What should
our diet and
wellness
plans be
in a world
of constantly
changing
advice from
experts?
LZ
F/SHUT
TERST
OCK