How to create a good DRIVING QUESTION?

Leo Reynolds via Compfight

here

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?

byronv2 via Compfight

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)?

• Is the question open-ended? It will allow students to develop more than one reasonable answer.

It is an open question started with WHY.

• 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?

• 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.

• 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.

THIS IS GOING TO BE MY LEARNING DIARY for the PBL course. More information about the course HERE and in the video below. 

I feel this will be the easiest way not only to fulfil the course requirements but also to share my reflections, my findings, other teachers’ thoughts, ideas, tools and whatever is worth sharing, with my colleagues.

As a course requirement, this diary will include:

• My answers and reflections to the questions and tasks posed during the module sections.

• Comments, ideas, resources from the course materials and shared by other course participants that I have found interesting or relevant for my own situation.

A brief introduction prepared using a TRADING CARD TOOL – a very easy program for creating selfies like that. You can use them with your students at the beginning of the course. I must admit I found it a bit limited but, for a short selfie like that, it should be more than enough 😉 

 And finally MY BLOGS – FOR TEACHERS  and for STUDENTS  

There is also a dedicated PBL website I prepared as a course task