Essential Question Workshop: Dystopia (Woohoo!) [S4 E81]
Listen to the full episode below:
Before we jump into the show notes…
If you’re getting ready to teach a dystopia unit of your own, you have to try introducing your unit with the picture book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! It’s such a fun lesson that we walk through in Episode 62 AND Marie has a vlog entirely dedicated to the lesson she did in class! Check it out here:
Welcome to season 4 of Brave New Teaching!
We’ve got some amazing things planned for this year. Let’s start with the fact that we’re going to reach episode 100 soon (whoop whoop)! Be on the lookout for celebrations and giveaways coming your way. Plus, the Shakespeare Teacher Festival 2.0 is coming this Spring with all new content just for you.
We’re kicking off season four with one of the topics that we get the most requests for, and that is all things related to essential questions. You want to know how to best write them, use them, etc. so we are sharing a special Dystopia-themed essential question workshop.
This workshop is unique because it features a conversation with one of our listeners, Taylor. Teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English in a small school. She uses the Pearson curriculum called “Taking a Stand” and is working on crafting an essential question for Hunger Games.
Taylor’s curriculum gives her the question of “When is it right to take a stand?”. Taylor wants to tweak it and focus on the theme of rebellion. You’ll hear Amanda and Taylor talk through the raw process of tackling an essential question for this unit.
We hope these workshops help to give you ideas for when you sit down to create your own essential questions. You truly can completely revamp a unit simply by tweaking an essential question to one that makes you and your students feel invigorated and excited to jump into the unit!
Topics Covered:
The three things that the best essential questions are derived from
Two engaging sentence stem options for crafting essential questions
A reminder to push students to think deeper
Other novels that would work well with a rebellion-themed essential question
Resources
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Related Episodes:
More about Brave New Teaching:
Join hosts Amanda Cardenas (Mud & Ink Teaching) and Marie Morris (The Caffeinated Classroom) in discussions about being brave, trying new things, and all things teaching! As seasoned classroom teachers, Amanda and Marie bring their experience, insight, energy, and oh, so many opinions and ideas... It's time for all teachers to take their classroom and teaching practice into their own hands!
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