Essential questions are the magic glitter glue for teaching social studies! These key questions focus facts and concepts into something meaningful to modern learners. History becomes relevant if the essential question requires students to examine a big issue in their own lives, culture, and in the past. A good essential question sticks everything together (the glue) and makes the information memorable (the glitter) and interesting (the magic) to modern students.
According to McTighe and Wiggins, essential questions are overarching questions with three important characteristics—they reflect the key inquiries within a discipline, can be applied over multiple units or disciplines, and serve as a conceptual framework for learning both concepts and discrete facts. These three characteristics are also the foundations that underlie thematic instruction.
The National Council for the Social Studies, in their C3 Framework, rebranded essential questions as compelling questions for inquiry in social studies. Compelling questions focus on issues and concerns of humans through time. Because they don’t have just one “correct” answer, but many different interpretations, they help students perceive the work of historians — “doing” history. Compelling questions combine the interests of students, the content of a discipline, and the literacy and inquiry skills needed in that discipline.
Whether you call them essential questions or compelling questions, these wonderful conceptual frameworks for learning big concepts and discrete facts over multiple units or across disciplines.
I love essential questions and every chapter of my books is focused on one or more essential questions. These questions prevent the broad histories of social history themes from ancient to modern times from turning into just “one darn fact and date after another.” Essential questions can be used in a single unit of study, across multiple units, set a theme for an entire year, or used to focus thematic instructions across multiple classes.
To learn more about essential questions from this author:
- How to Use Essential Questions to Focus Instruction in Social Studies
- Teaching Daily Life in the Past: Using Essential Questions in Chronological Units
- Compelling Questions + Social History
- Blog posts from Primary Source Bazaar with social history essential questions:
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- Scrapbooks: Comparing 19th-century primary sources to 21st social media
- Almanacs: Information before the Internet
- Egyptomania: Reviving Ancient Symbols in 19th Century Cemeteries
- Classroom Manners: Analyzing behavior with primary sources
- From Medieval Bread to School Lunches: Government Regulation of Food
- What has replaced 19th Century Parlors and Calling Cards?
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More resources:
- Essential Questions by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins
- Examples of essential questions for American history (mostly political history) from Gilder Lehrman