Compelling Questions
In the context of the social studies, compelling questions should strive to address issues that pertain to history, geography, political science, or the behavioral sciences. In order to answer a compelling question, one must analyze evidence to construct meaning and their own interpretation of the evidence at hand.
When using compelling questions in the classroom setting, the question should be clear and something that students care about. For example, a question that centers on equality is something that students care about, as it is important to them that they are treated fairly.
Example compelling question:
When did African Americans gain equality?
The beauty of a compelling question is that there are many answers. One student could reply, "African Americans gained equality with the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement." Another could say, "African Americans still have not gained equality." A third student could answer, "Legislative efforts have been made to protect the rights of African Americans, but these efforts have only experienced minor success."
Supporting Questions
A compelling question on its own is incredibly in-depth; the supporting questions help students step back from the larger picture to look at individual details. Basically, the answers to supporting questions provide the information necessary in order to reach the goal of answering the compelling question.
Supporting questions should be fact-based. Remember that an answer to a compelling question should be in the form of an argument. The answers to supporting questions provide the evidence necessary with which to support the answer to the compelling question.
Example supporting questions:
What forms of discrimination have African Americans faced since the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement?
What successes did African Americans achieve during the Civil Rights Movement?
In My Own Practice...
I would like to structure my units in a way that includes these types of questions. I will center each unit around one compelling question and use daily lessons to answer supporting questions. This will translate to my Essential Learning Objectives (compelling questions) and my Learning Targets (supporting questions), as this is the language that my school district uses. This will also give students an idea of the focus of the particular unit.
My students are more engaged with activities in which they get to solve a puzzle; they see an object or image and then have to come to a conclusion about its purpose and what it can tell us about a culture. Structuring my classes to fit this model will help students engage more as well as see the purpose in the content that we are learning.
How is Classroom Culture Connected to Inquiry-Based Learning?
I believe that in order to have a positive classroom culture that allows an inquiry-based class to work, students need to trust each other and the teacher. They also need to trust in themselves and be willing to take risks and try to provide answers to difficult questions, even if they aren’t sure that they are correct. Students should feel safe in the classroom and feel comfortable with the possibility that they might not know something, but inferring is a valuable skill that they should practice. In addition, there are many questions for which there are no “correct” answers, so as long as students are able to provide evidence to support a well-reasoned answer, they are, in essence, “correct.”
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