Questions - Are they really essential?

Project-based learning is something I've always wanted to tackle, but I never seemed to have the time to dig into such a meaty topic. In this course, I really enjoyed taking the time to dive into the various components of PBL, starting with essential questions. Our class discussions surrounding essential questions, in particular, really stuck with me, as I had always thought of essential questions to be topic or content specific, however, through this course, I learned that essential questions should span several subject areas and spark real intrigue with students. The essential questions I had used

previously didn't do either of those things, and frankly, generating questions that did was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. However, through extensive discussions with our cohort, this became easier. Previously, during a unit on how communities change over time, I have used the essential question, "How does where we live affect how we live?" However, this question doesn't necessarily get the students' blood pumping, nor can it really be used across a variety of subjects. So I broadened it and hopefully made it more interesting and turned it into, "Why change?" This essential question is much more thought-provoking, and can also be used in many subject areas. Change can be discussed in science, math, literature, as well as social studies. For my UBD project in this course, my overarching topic was integrating a study of Chicago history with a study of biography, and challenging students to design monument honoring a famous person in Chicago history and then pitch it to the Chicago City Council. Originally, I wanted my essential question for this project to be "How can people impact society?" But, after feedback from our professor as well as from the members of my cohort, I opened it up even further and changed it to, "What does it mean to remember?" I plan on using the original essential question as a sub-question during the unit, but the overarching essential question about what it means to remember is much meatier and can span content areas. Moving forward, I will look at the essential questions that I use to drive unit planning with a much more critical eye, ensuring that they are open-ended, able to span across several content areas, and are thought-provoking enough to spark interesting classroom discussions throughout the unit or even across an entire school year.

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