Creating an Essential Question Inquiry Project Rules for

Creating an Essential Question Inquiry Project

Rules for Producing Questions § Ask as many questions as you can § Do not stop to answer, judge or to discuss the questions § Write down every question exactly as it is stated § Change any statement into a question

Your Question-Focus (Q-Focus) (Today, we will use a Theme Topic) examples: love, identity, survival, loyalty, growing up, capitalism, democracy, nature, war, death, individual’s obligation to society

Theme Topics: • Choose a movie that you know well • Generate a list of single-word or single-phrase “thematic topics” for your movie… • Make as long a list as possible… • Now choose the two you think are the most important

Generate Questions: For your theme topics, create questions about them… as many as possible: Ø Example: If the movie was a comedy, and “humour” was a thematic topic… • Why do we find things funny? • Why are some things funny for me but not for you? • What is the definition of “humour”? • How have people’s sense of humours changed over time? • Do we still find things funny that were considered funny in the past?

In your group of 2 -3 -write any questions that come to mind -your recorder should create questions too

Categorizing Questions CLOSED-ENDED -can be answered briefly with yes or no -have one or only a few answers -may not spark discussion/debate OPEN-ENDED -cannot be answered quickly; require explanation -have numerous answers -can spark discussion or debate

Look at your questions: Mark them as “O” for open-ended and as “C” for closed-ended.

Practice Choose a close-ended question and turn it into an open-ended question

Working in your groups… Each of you chooses two questions that… • most interest you. • you consider to be the most important – the questions that are most important for understanding the movie… • *Identify them by writing your name beside each

SHARE QUESTIONS with your class! • Name of movie? • Which question interested you the most?

And now… Working individually, begin the same process to create Essential Inquiry Questions regarding your Personal Novel!

Steps to Generating an Essential Question: • Make a list of key thematic topics from your book (especially focusing on ones that interest you). • Create as many questions relating to each of these topics as you can – do not stop to judge them yet. Change any statement into a question. • Categorize questions: open or close-ended. Change close-ended questions to open-ended. • Decide which ONE is most interesting to you, most important for you.