A question is "Essential" when it:
- Causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content.
- Provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions.
- Requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers.
- Stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons.
- Sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences.
- Naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.


