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Element 5a: Description of Curriculum Project

Trisha King: Through this curriculum inquiry project I will be uncovering as well
as analyzing the use of essential questions as curriculum. This inquiry will be focusing on
essential questions used in an eighth grade Language Arts classroom in a rural school
district in Craig, Colorado for a two week study during the spring of 2015.
The vision to investigate this topic was brought on because my school district
utilizes the curriculum Understanding by Design. I want to investigate how essential
questions improve students learning outcomes of thoughtfully engaging in a Socratic
Seminar with the essential questions that I prepare as well as teach students how to create
essential questions. Furthermore, it is the hope of this project that it will influence and
encourage students to think deeply without having to depend on the oracle of the Internet
to seek answers. In addition, this will encourage fellow teachers as well as myself to
employ essential questions throughout daily activities during a unit of study, which in
turn will boost critical thinking skills amongst students.
Ultimately, this curriculum project will optimistically demonstrate how essential
questions enhance learning outcomes for all students, create a critical thinking-learning
environment, enrich a unit of study, and finally guide teachers to employ questioning
techniques. This will help put the onus on students experiences, prior knowledge, and
again require higher order thinking skills.