We were still doing “characterization”, but we were doing it better and more critically. We stopped writing down character traits and started looking at Montag and his world and comparing it to America. Suddenly, “characterization” wasn’t that important: uncovering Montag’s evolution and exploring in what ways we are being lied to or choosing not to seek out the truth became the central focus. So now that we had this question to guide our unit, we had an entirely new perspective on teaching Fahrenheit. It pairs a fictional genre with a real place and invites comparison It is prime for argument at a variety of levels (most E2 students could answer it in some way) It asks students to define what dystopia is so that they can qualify it It asks students to qualify an amount - how much of America is dystopian? This little shift changed everything and every day, we were scrambling to meet together to talk about the new opportunities for critical thinking that were opening up every day. We came up with this: to what extent is America a dystopia? And it. We were just trying to write a question to get our boss off our backs and to “cover” the things that we were already covering in the unit. The first Essential Question we ever wrote, we really had no idea what we were doing.
The assessment was something literary analysis related and I can’t remember any shining stars in that bunch, either. Nothing that stellar and, to be honest, we were really struggling getting kids to read it in the first place. We focused on close reading skills (figurative language), characterization, and plot structure kinds of things. But curriculum transformation doesn’t really photograph as well, so you’ll have to read what I have to say and picture it in your head.īefore, our unit was called Fahrenheit 451. It was like losing 350lbs or having my life changed on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I wish I had some amazing transformation photo to show you, because that’s what this experience felt like. And I even have developed a MASTERCLASS to help you get started writing your own EQs! BEFORE
And then, we started Fahrenheit 451, and we got it. Then, slowly, we started experimenting with using EQs. I was pretty set on not changing my ways (even as a young teacher!), but because I so highly respected my department chair at the time, I decided to hear her out and read the research. When I first learned about Essential Questions, I was skeptical. By controlling every unit by the book, theme, or skill of my choosing, I was forcing an agenda that could only be controlled by me, leaving students distant unless I put on a show every day and (as you know) that is how you get on the fast track to Burnout City. 100% of the work was on me and none of it was on the kids.
There were a lot of struggles that I faced in my early years, and it wasn’t until around my sixth year of teaching that I realized that it wasn’t my classroom management that was a problem or my own competence that was a problem: it was that my units were too narrow and I was working way too hard lesson-by-lesson to dance and sing in an effort to get my students to be engaged. For a long time, English teachers have been teaching in three very specific ways: novel-based, skill-based, and theme-based units.