What's the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking »

Jim Burke is the author of the Heinemann title What's the Big Idea? The question he's always tried to answer is "How can we teach our students better?" He began this search in his own classroom at Burlingame High School in California, where he still teaches. He shares his experiences there in bestselling professional titles with Heinemann such as The English Teacher's Companion; Reading Reminders; and Writing Reminders as well as through Heinemann Professional Development Services. Looking to his peers for still more answers, he founded the English Companion Ning, described by Education Week as "the world's largest English department." Jim continues to find and support best practices in many other ways, including serving on national commissions related to adolescent literacy and standards, such as the Advanced Placement English Literature and Language Course and Exam Review Commission with the College Board, and by being a senior author on the Holt McDougal Harcourt Literature series. Jim has received numerous awards, including the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award, the NCTE Conference on English Leadership Award, and the California Reading Association Hall of Fame Award. He served on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Committee on Adolescence and Young Adulthood English Language Arts Standards and recently worked with ACT on their high school English Language Arts standards. In 2007, he participated in the national Adolescent Literacy Coalition roundtable and worked with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Visit his website (www.englishcompanion.com) for more information.

Many people have written about how theory (or research) relates to practice; Jim is one of those rare professionals who live the relationship.

-Arthur Applebee

NAEP advisor,

Validation committee member for Common Core,

Author of Curriculum as Conversation

Why a book about questions? "Because when students' instruction is organized around meaningful, clear questions," writes Jim Burke in What's the Big Idea? "they understand better, remember longer, and engage much more deeply and for greater periods of time."

Jim shows how making essential questions the center of your teaching can ease the tension between good teaching and teaching to the test while giving students dependable, transferable tools for reading, writing, thinking, and participating in the real world. Going in depth on his own units for frequently taught books, Jim shows how to plan lessons, units, and even entire courses around big ideas to help students:

• grapple with content and deepen comprehension through reading, writing, and discussion
• make learning stick by connecting it to texts, to students' experiences, and to the world
• clarify and extend their thinking by learning which questions to ask and when
• improve school and test performance by honing academic language and skills.

"Although no one thing can ever be the solution to all problems," Jim writes, "this book demonstrates the ways in which questions can address your concerns and develop in our students the mental acuity and fluency necessary to succeed in school and at work, as well as to achieve a sense of purpose in their personal lives." The only question now is, Are you ready to change your students' learning and lives?

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

Why Do Questions Matter in Curriculum? 1

An Introduction

Sample Unit 1 An Intellectual Rite of Passage 22

Engaging Students with Essential Questions

Sample Unit 2 Spirited Inquiry 46

Creating Questions to Access a Challenging Text

Sample Unit 3 Natural Curiosity 74

Using Questions to Explore Relationships

Sample Unit 4 Meaningful Conversations 130

Essential Questions as a Way into Required Texts

Using Essential Questions to Design Your Own Units 154

Some Final Thoughts

Appendices

Appendix A Of Mice and Men Chapter-by-Chapter Reading Notes and Questions 162

Appendix B The Academic Essentials Planning Grid 169

Appendix C The Big Questions 170

Appendix D Designing a Standards-Based Curriculum 176

Appendix E Unit Planning Sheet 180

Works Cited 181

Study Guide 184

Index 193