The Essential Questions

Uncover new sides of family members you’ve known your entire life with this indispensable guide that includes space for journaling. Just as the oral histories of people around the world are disappearing amid rapid change, there is a risk that your family’s personal stories, too, will be lost forever. In The Essential Questions, anthropologist Elizabeth Keating helps you to uncover the unique memories of your parents and grandparents and to create lasting connection with them in the process. As you seek to learn more about your family history, how do you get beyond familiar anecdotes and avoid the frustration of oppositional generational attitudes? By asking questions that make the familiar strange, anthropologists are able to see entirely different perspectives and understand new cultures. Drawing on her lifelong work in this field, Keating has developed a set of questions that treat your parents and grandparents not just as the people who raised you, but as individuals of a certain society and time, and as the children, teenagers, and young adults they once were. The Essential Questions helps you to learn about the history of your elders, to see the world through their eyes, and to honor the language they choose to describe their experiences.

This book from the authors of Understanding by Design explores how to design and frame essential questions that prompt students to think deeply and create a more stimulating environment for learning.

What are "essential questions," and how do they differ from other kinds of questions? What's so great about them? Why should you design and use essential questions in your classroom? Essential questions (EQs) help target standards as you organize curriculum content into coherent units that yield focused and thoughtful learning. In the classroom, EQs are used to stimulate students' discussions and promote a deeper understanding of the content. Whether you are an Understanding by Design (UbD) devotee or are searching for ways to address standards—local or Common Core State Standards—in an engaging way, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins provide practical guidance on how to design, initiate, and embed inquiry-based teaching and learning in your classroom. Offering dozens of examples, the authors explore the usefulness of EQs in all K-12 content areas, including skill-based areas such as math, PE, language instruction, and arts education. As an important element of their backward design approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the authors *Give a comprehensive explanation of why EQs are so important; *Explore seven defining characteristics of EQs; *Distinguish between topical and overarching questions and their uses; *Outline the rationale for using EQs as the focal point in creating units of study; and *Show how to create effective EQs, working from sources including standards, desired understandings, and student misconceptions. Using essential questions can be challenging—for both teachers and students—and this book provides guidance through practical and proven processes, as well as suggested "response strategies" to encourage student engagement. Finally, you will learn how to create a culture of inquiry so that all members of the educational community—students, teachers, and administrators—benefit from the increased rigor and deepened understanding that emerge when essential questions become a guiding force for learners of all ages.

New York Times Bestseller “What, What? is a welcome—and joyful—reminder that true wisdom comes from asking the right questions. Should you read this book? Absolutely.” —Clayton Christensen, bestselling author of How Will You Measure Your Life? Based on the wildly popular commencement address, the art of asking (and answering) good questions by the Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Whether we’re in the boardroom or the classroom, we spend far too much time and energy looking for the right answer. But the truth is that questions are just as important as answers, often more so. If you ask the wrong question, for instance, you’re guaranteed to get the wrong answer. A good question, on the other hand, inspires a good answer and, in the process, invites deeper understanding and more meaningful connections between people. Asking a good question requires us to move beyond what we think we know about an issue or a person to explore the difficult and the unknown, the awkward, and even the unpleasant. In Wait, What?, Jim Ryan, dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, celebrates the art of asking—and answering—good questions. Five questions in particular: Wait, what?; I wonder…? Couldn’t we at least…?; How can I help?; and What truly matters? Using examples from politics, history, popular culture, and social movements, as well as his own personal life, Ryan demonstrates how these essential inquiries generate understanding, spark curiosity, initiate progress, fortify relationships, and draw our attention to the important things in life—from the Supreme Court to Fenway Park. By regularly asking these five essential questions, Ryan promises, we will be better able to answer life’s most important question: “And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?” At once hilarious and illuminating, poignant and surprising, Wait, What? is an inspiring book of wisdom that will forever change the way you think about questions.

A revised and expanded edition of the classic relationship book that has helped thousands of couples shape a shared vision for their lives together. With this simple-yet-profound relationship tool, Susan Piver shows couples at any stage of their relationships--whether they are considering engagement, have been married for decades, or just want to deepen their connection--how they can forge and strengthen lasting, intimate bonds. Focusing on key areas such as home, money, work, community, and family, The Hard Questions contains 100 thought-provoking questions for couples to ask each other, including: • What will our home look like? • What are our professional goals? • How do you feel about sharing our life on social media? • Will we try to have children, and if so, when? The Hard Questions provides couples with guidance and support for having the kind of conversations that will lead them to a deeper understanding of each other and a happy, healthy, and prosperous future together.

This is an easy to use guide on assessment for learning, answering common questions about 21st century standards and grading considerations.

A real-world action plan for educators to create personalizedlearning experiences Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the ContemporaryClassroom provides teachers, administrators, and educationalleaders with a clear and practical guide to personalized learning.Written by respected teachers and leading educational consultantsAllison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman, this comprehensiveresource explores what personalized learning looks like, how itchanges the roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder, andwhy it inspires innovation. The authors explain that, in order tocreate highly effective personalized learning experiences, a newinstructional design is required that is based loosely on thetraditional model of apprenticeship: learning by doing. Learning Personalized challenges educators to rethink thefundamental principles of schooling that honors students' naturalwillingness to play, problem solve, fail, re-imagine, and share.This groundbreaking resource: Explores the elements of personalized learning and offers aframework to achieve it Provides a roadmap for enrolling relevant stakeholders tocreate a personalized learning vision and reimagine new roles andresponsibilities Addresses needs and provides guidance specific to the jobdescriptions of various types of educators, administrators, andother staff This invaluable educational resource explores a simple frameworkfor personalized learning: co-creation, feedback, sharing, andlearning that is as powerful for a teacher to re-examine classroompractice as it is for a curriculum director to reexamine thestructure of courses.

Since the days of the Ancient Greeks, history has been perceived as the academic study of the past. Unfortunately, it has generally been taught as a litany of rigid, boring facts intended to be accepted rather than questioned. This has been reinforced for decades by weighty textbooks that overwhelm the reader with mind-numbing details presented in a chronological sequence. The end result is that students see little relevance of what they learn in history class to the real world, and many simply struggle to stay awake. Compared to other subjects taught at the secondary level, history is frequently judged to be the most boring. This is largely because it is viewed as an intellectually lifeless subject that presents few opportunities for active engagement. Questioning History is a book built around 16 essential questions designed to challenge this common assumption. Each question is broad, open-ended and subject to vigorous debate. By examining the historical background behind each question and by analyzing the ways in which the question can be answered, the reader will come away with a deeper understanding of the past and a new appreciation for history as a cognitively dynamic subject. In addition, by using each chapter as a platform for engaging discussions and Socratic seminars, the reader will be able to refine the decision-making skills necessary for effective citizenship in a democratic society. Depending on the classroom or the setting in which it is being used, Questioning History can either take the place of the more traditional textbook or at least be used as a supplement to make it come more alive. The best way to learn and to appreciate a subject is through active engagement. Questioning History provides a shot of adrenalin to the study of history.