In my last post we looked at Focus Questions. I ended the post asking how we could make them easier for our students to answer and since we want our students to grow in wisdom, and not be puppets, we can’t just take the easy way out and tell them the answers.
So, how do we do it? We answer the questions with more questions.
I call these Focused Essential Questions. These are questions you develop while unit planning and lesson planning and which you use to guide your instruction. Essentially they are part of your objectives for the lessons. The lesson content and structure of the activity provides the means for your students to answer these questions which in turn gives them a better understanding of the Focus Question.
I have provided just a few FEQ’S below to help you understand their relation to the Focus questions. There will be many more …
Subject specific
Focused Essential Questions
Truth
Elementary: Where does truth come from?
Language Arts:
• Is this story true or make believe (fiction or non-fiction)?
• How do you know what the author is telling you is fact or opinion?
Social Studies:
• Who should you trust?
• Did this person discover something new?
• Can the person telling this story be trusted?
Math:
• Will this fact (3+5 = 8, 4 x 6 = 24, etc.) always be true?
Thanks for your work on this, Enjoyed the interview.