challenging, and relevant.
The essential questions you ask students for this activity can be from a variety of different viewpoints. They can be personal.
• “How do you discover your true calling?”
• “What can you do to improve your relationship with your family?”
• “Which country have you always wanted to visit and why?”
They can be philosophical.
• “What does it mean to truly be alive?”
• “Why do we dream and what do our dreams tell us?”
• “What should be our greatest goal as a society and why?”
They can be ethical.
• “Is condemning a murderer to death justifiable?”
• “Is it acceptable to risk harm to others to benefit someone who is clearly in need?”
• “Should people be allowed to clone themselves?”
They can be scientific.
• “What type of diet allows for optimum athletic performance?”
• “When and how do scientific theories change?”
• “How can we be sure that the universe beyond our world is truly infinite?”
They can be global.
• “How could we ensure and sustain enough food, water, and clothing for every living person on Earth?”
• “How has technology transformed how we see ourselves and others? Is this good or bad?”
• “How can small actions eventually change the world?”
For a deeper challenge, break students into groups and have them take turns posing their essential questions to the group for discussion. Pay careful attention to the questions they are sharing, and if possible, encourage them to find ways to link them to lessons in the curriculum. From there, choose the best questions as the focus for upcoming classroom units of study.
Reflection
After you complete this activity with your students, take some time to reflect on and answer the following questions.
• What are the types of issues that students revealed they are most interested in exploring?
• Why are these matters important to them?
• How did student groups discuss and answer the questions?
• Is there anything students are still wondering about?
• What do they know about exploring important issues in this manner that they didn’t know before?
Use Socratic Seminars
The Greek philosopher Socrates was renowned for his belief in the power of asking good questions. The aptly named Socratic seminar seeks to provide a powerful platform for students to both ask and answer open-ended questions about a wide range of topics and content in a way that is highly collaborative and social (“Socratic Seminar,” n.d.). Socratic seminars call for students to apply critical and independent thinking by way of forming both essential and herding questions about the discussion topic and responding to the questions of others. Socratic seminars also teach learners how to respond to questions with thoughtfulness and civility.
Activity
Hold your own classwide Socratic seminar on a topic or material you choose. Begin by exploring the structure of the Socratic seminar with your learners. Students can prepare well beforehand by reading the appropriate text and formulating questions as though they were entering a formal debate. Work with students to also come up with a clear list of guidelines and expectations for the seminar.
On the day the seminar begins, you are the one best prepared to lead the discussion so that students can get their feet wet with the whole process. However, you ultimately want them to take over the proceedings and lead the discussions themselves, almost as if you weren’t even in the room. Since your learners’ thought processes and inquiries are the focal point of the Socratic seminar, it makes sense to involve students in these structural decisions.
The guidelines you’ll agree to follow are important, such as when to turn discussion—a sharing of ideas—into debate. In this context, that debate should consist of peers attempting to persuade each other and challenge each other’s opinions. Throughout the process, your role will be one of mediator and guide for the discussion, steering it back to the right trajectory if it should happen to go off the rails.
As you should always do when engaging students in a format of this nature, debrief afterward. You and your students work together to assess the effectiveness of the seminar on the day’s or the week’s learning goals. As part of this debrief, ask students to set goals for future seminars and discuss topics of interest that will provide fodder for lively discussions and the development of more essential questions.
Reflection
After you complete this activity with your students, take some time to reflect on and answer the following questions.
• What did the Socratic seminar teach learners about developing thinking and questioning skills?
• What were some of the most powerful moments for you and your students in this activity?
• What could the students have done differently to make the seminar more effective?
• How could you use this activity for assessment purposes?
Summary
Questions matter; they are, in fact, essential. Where there are no questions, there is no interest and no curiosity. Without interest, there is no learning. I believe that the art of teaching has less to do with knowing and more to do with questioning. Essential and herding questions lie at the root of powerful learning; they take a student from zero interest in learning to finding real answers and cultivating a desire to create meaningful solutions. Asking questions instead of simply providing answers moves the responsibility for the learning where it should be—to the student. Now that you know more about how to bring essential questions into your lessons every day, use your new knowledge to answer students’ questions with more questions and let them reap the benefits. Asking questions that drive curiosity and interest is a tactic that you’ll find incredibly useful when diving into our next shift of practice, which is all about connecting students to learning using context and relevance.
Guiding Questions
As you reflect on this chapter, consider the following five guiding questions.
1. Why do we ask questions?
2. What are essential and herding questions, and why are they important for learning?
3. What is the difference between a nonessential question and an essential one? In what ways can you use both to create a successful learning environment?
4.
