It might be: solving a problem or task, creating a product, education others, convincing others, a broad theme, forming an opinion, philosophical issue, thinking divergently. What is divergent thinking? Well, how many uses of a paper clip can you think of? More about divergent thinking here – a really nice video clip.
SO WILL BE MY DRIVING QUESTION for the SCOTTISH FESTIVAL project?
P2P:
A GOOD DRIVING QUESTION
NC4 ESOL for Employability is a full time college course for young learners (16-25) living and working/planning to work and studying in Scotland. It consists of 12 various units including ESOL Writing for Employability, IT and Living in Scotland. As part of assessment for these three units, students will have to produce a leaflet on SCOTTISH FESTIVALS. Each student will have a different festival.
Students will research the festival chosen, using at least three websites with full accreditation. They should give two reasons for deciding to write about this festival, say where and when the festival is celebrated, say why it is celebrated, describe what activities the festival involves and say why it is important. They might add their own ideas. For IT, the leaflet should be in Arial 12, 1.5 line space.
The driving question:
Why should (or shouldn’t) Scots celebrate ………. (the name of the Scottish festival or the festival celebrated in Scotland such as Burn’s Night, Common Riding of the Borders, Burning of The Clavie or Mela)?
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Is the question open-ended? It will allow students to develop more than one reasonable answer.
It is an open question started with WHY.
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Do you feel the question will spark curiosity and engage the students? (remember this might be dependent on the local contexts of the students)
Yes, students will need to research the origin of the festival, how it was and still is celebrated in Scotland or in different regions of Scotland. And, finally, students will reflect on why people still celebrate it which will lead to the driving question – should it or should it not be still celebrated?
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Is it aligned to the learning goals identified? To answer it students will need to gain the intended knowledge, understanding, and skills.
The task will cover performance criteria for 3 subjects: ESOl writing (Everyday Life context), Living in Scotland (Outcome 1) and IT.
They will develop such skills as: research, crediting sources, editing a document in Word, making notes.
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Is it difficult to answer by using Google? – I checked myself and it is not possible to find a strait forward answer to this question.
