What is an Essential Question?
That was the basis for Giselle Martin- Kniep’s EARCOS workshop this morning. It certainly challenged our ability to think and question at 8am this morning!
Her theory is that the art of questioning is the art of increasing and managing dissonance and novelty. You have to keep the kids interested but don’t want to lose them. We discussed how an essential question doesn’t necessarily have a right answer but that there should be a deeper understanding of the question.
We looked at the New Bloom’s Taxonomy and debated about the difference between conceptual questions and meta-cognitive questions. By analyzing some of the questions we had written we were able to think carefully about the kinds of questions we are asking and how they help our students to learn.. One thing that has to be considered when planning your questions is where your students are coming from and the safety and support in the class environment within which you are asking them.
| The Cognitive Process Dimension | ||||||
| The Knowledge Dimension |
Remember | Understand | Apply | Analyze | Evaluate | Create |
| Factual Knowledge |
List | Summarize | Classify | Order | Rank | Combine |
| Conceptual Knowledge |
Describe | Interpret | Experiment | Explain | Assess | Plan |
| Procedural Knowledge |
Tabulate | Predict | Calculate | Differentiate | Conclude | Compose |
| Meta- Cognitive Knowledge |
Appropriate Use |
Execute | Construct | Achieve | Action | Actualize |
This clip from Mona Lisa Smile illustrates the idea of what is an effective question. In a previous scene the students have demonstrated their ability to memorise and factually recall answers. The teacher now challenges them to think meta-cognitively and conceptually.
I now need to look at my own practise. One of Giselle’s suggestions was to ask a colleague to watch you teach and then scribe all the questions. You could then categorise them into convergent/ divergent questions or by using the Knowledge or Cognitive Process Dimensions of Blooms. Then most importantly reflect on them. Often what we ask and what we think we ask may not be the same.
I also liked the idea of doing question plans rather than lesson plans. I feel that I am in a good place with this. We often discuss some essential questions in my Grade 3 class and being a PYP school may have more freedom and time than some to have the opportunity to explore meaningful questions.
I particularly was intrigued with the idea of an ill-structured prompt. This is where you ask a non-question or in other words you don’t ask a question but get the students to make sense of something and develop their own questions to answer. This ties in well with self initiated inquiry and student action possibly, two areas in which I am keen to improve my practise.
I will be attending Giselle’s next workshop on critical thinking and I am very much looking forward to reflecting on that.
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Your post is really informative. I like the idea of “question plans.” I remember an EARCOS presentation given by Art Costa about questioning a few years ago. He talked about delivering a question as a plural, such as “What ways are there to…” It is a different idea than you present here but it promotes ideas and sharing I think. I am wondering what an “ill-structured prompt” looks like. Can you just begin with a visual or demonstration and ask them what they think?
My understanding is that an ill-structured prompt is one that is not in the form of a question. So you may give the students some data or information and they will develop their own questions through studying the information they have been given. So yes I think by sharing a visual or demonstration you could do the same thing. On a recent unit on the Earth I gave my Grade 3 students a map of the world and some data from the UK Geo Survey on recent earthquake activity. I then asked them to look for patterns. Next time I may just give them the data and then ask them to develop the questions that come to mind as they do it.