Essential Questions: Middle School Student's Building a Path of Learning.

10/13/2011

Below are the 24 questions our students created after several days of discussion on Essential Questions (click here to see the post on the build up to these questions). The questions are ALL student created and we hope to use their ideas and desire to understand pave the way for learning this year.

1. How do art and music affect how people live?
2. Why did civilizations start where they did?
3. How have past leaders affected the modern day?
4. How has U.S. culture changed the world?
5. How did people live before philosophy and science/how did the world change when it was discovered?
6. How has war changed the world for better or worse?
7. Why do people have religion/why are there different religions?
8. Why do people separate themselves based on differences?
9. How does war affect society?
10. Why is trade important?
11. How does music affect/influence people in different societies?
12. How does architecture evolve?
13. How do the choices you make affect the world?
14. What does it mean to have power?
15. Why is there conflict between societies?
16. How has war evolved throughout time?
17. How does the institutionalization of education effect societies?
18. Why do you think women have almost never had equal rights?
19. Why do people in some countries suffer for things that are basic human rights?
20. Why do we fear what we don’t know.
21. How did the Europeans Explore t he World when have no modern technology?
22 What would have happened if Jesus was never born?
23. Why are some people free and others not?
24. Why is education unequal?
25. How do we know what we know is real?

Our students put a great deal of effort into making this list. We hope you will comment on this post, so we can share with them your favorites and maybe even your own essential questions. By the way, one of my favorites is #25, Thanks 8 period.

To learn more about essential questions see my diigo account(GarthHolman)

3 Comments

Raphael Gisstand

12/6/2011 05:58:24 am

From my perspective and experience, two challenges to adolescent’s literacy development that currently impact learning in US schools are student socioeconomic status and the rigidity of state standardized testing. Student socioeconomic status is a challenge when students face barriers when learning that are caused by their socio-economic status. Many times, barriers in communication and culture interfere with the process of education. Focusing on overcoming some of the barriers can help with contributing to improving adolescent literacy development. A lack of culturally responsive instruction and cultural motivation in lessons can have negative results on adolescent literacy development. The rigidity of state standardized testing is another challenge to adolescent literacy development. State standardized testing can become a challenge when assessing student’s skills as many students have anxiety over test taking. Due to the states using these testing assessments to determine student proficiency, standardized tests are considered indicative of student knowledge based on state benchmarks. Realizing the fact that prior knowledge plays a major role in literacy development is important. Students have differing levels of literacy performance skills and learn in a variety of ways. Thus, state benchmarks and standards alone only result in teachers ‘teaching-to-the-test’. This form of education does not incorporate the recent research on evidence based skills that students should know prior to taking standardized tests. The research shows that students that lack these skills tend to not perform as well as students that possess these skills. When students do not have the basic skills associated with responding to questions that appear on standardized tests, they will not perform with high levels of proficiency. When a student lacks knowledge that is required to demonstrate mastery of problem solving on a standardized test, the student skills are not properly assessed and results may not reflect student overall ability.

Kim kelchner

6/20/2012 02:03:34 am

I like numbers 17 &24. I am still wowed by the thought provoking questions presented by these middleschoolers.

Nick Martin

4/7/2014 08:02:50 am

I'm actually sitting in class with Garth right now! What I like about these essential questions is that they can be applied to multiple historical topics, events, groups of people, culture, etc. The questions aren't just about memorizing facts and details. Students can delve deeper into history and discover what interests them the most, which will be different for everyone. What I also like is that students can answer these questions no matter what their language abilities or writing abilities are. Students can answer the questions using visuals or multimedia tools and still feel a sense of personal accomplishment. To address the "will it help them on standardized tests" question, the answer is a resounding yes! If students are taking a reading test, they need to be able to read and interpret facts and details about a topic that they might be unfamiliar to them. Isn't that what students are doing when they do research projects? Reading something new and unfamiliar to figure out what's important and what's relevant to teaching and learning. Great job to these seventh grade students for writing such thoughtful questions!!

Essential Questions: Middle School Student's Building a Path of Learning.

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