Essential questions: technique put to the test

Today, I tried using "Essential Questions" with my classes and put this technique to the test.

The lesson was a reading activity. The text is about the queen of soul, Sade. It talks about her life and why she avoids publicity and prefers keeping a kind of privacy. I started by asking the question: Do you want to be a celebrity? Why? What is the price we pay for being one?

First, we talked about the brighter side of the story: my students said that celebrities have all the commodities and the privileges we may dream of, like being famous, being rich, being able to travel to many countries, being able to have fairy-like weddings, etc,.. I wrote down the answers on the board under the heading: Good side.Then, I asked: Can you think of any bad points? Are all celebrities happy? My students hesitated for a moment. So, I showed two pictures: one is a recent photo of Britney Spears shaving her hair, the other one is for Michael Jackson hiding his face from journalists and photographers after the trials in the American courts.

So, my students started talking about pop stars going to rehab because they have psychological problems or because they are addicted to drugs or alcohol. They also mentioned the fact that some were harassed by lunatic fans. We talked also about paparazzi and how they made Maradona loose control and almost kill one of them. I wrote these and others on the board under the heading: Bad side. Later, my students sat in groups of four and started writing about being a celebrity. They only jotted down a few more ideas and I asked them to keep them for future reference when we will write about this topic.

When we moved to the reading activity, my students were equipped with a valid background and a good range of vocabulary that they would come across in the text. It was clear that the debate we had made my students appreciate the text and they enjoyed the reading activity as a whole.

I think essential questions are great because they can involve students and provide them with a real context and a reason for learning the language as these questions led them to broaden their knowledge and awareness of current issues. However, I think it is not the only way to make students adhere more positively to the learning process.

Coming posts will talk about other compelling techniques that can be as interesting as essential questions.

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Essential questions

Question: How to make students engage in learning? How to make a unit/lesson look more relevant and more meaningful?

Answer: One of the problems faced by teachers is when the topic taught seems irrelevant or devoid of a meaningful context. The students seem indifferent because the content, at first sight, looks rather severed from their needs and backgrounds. This is often the case in our schools because teachers become more concerned with covering the whole curriculum rather than mediating a learner-oriented content.

Becoming a better teacher: eight innovations that work by Giselle O. Martin-Kniep addresses this and other problems as well in a comprehensive and thorough manner.

To make sure that students identify with the subjects that are taught and engage in the curriculum, teachers can use what Giselle calls "essential questions". These questions "allow teachers to tackle the curriculum while helping them treat it as something to be discovered and negotiated." They can help generating debates and raise the level of discourse in the classroom and can also serve as a good way to relate previously taught topics to the currently taught one.

Giselle argues that these questions have the following criteria in common:

• They are universal
• They are never fully answerable
• The more we grow mature, the more we discover we still have more to learn about the answers
• They lead to the realization that knowledge is an ongoing process and one that makes life worth living

Here are some examples by the author about what essential questions look like:

• Are we really free?
• What is the meaning of life?
• Do we have control over our destiny?
• If we are so alike, how do we explain our differences?
• Can there be good without evil?
• Are all cultures equally valuable?
• Can you win and lose at the same time?
• When is cheating not bad?
• Is education essential for success in life?

How can we use these questions? It depends on the topic or unit that is going to be taught. For a lesson talking about the merits of the Internet, one may start by asking the question: Is technology a foe or a friend? The question: are humans inhumane? Can provide a framework for a lesson about "crime", etc..

Side note: Do you have any comments? Please add them here.

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