The secret is to pose or ask students to pose questions or problems and decisions which have never been adequately answered. Even though students must learn how to find discrete facts such as the population of Chile or France, we have labored too long in those vineyards. We need fewer treasure and scavenger hunts. It is time to emphasize questions which challenge students at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy . . . We transform topical research into projects which demand that students move past mere gathering of information to the construction of new meanings and insight.
Students become producers of insight and ideas rather than mere consumers .
Emphasize essential questions. Essential questions are questions worth asking, questions that touch upon basic human issues or touch matters of the heart and the soul. Often as not, they spawn inquiries which might extend over a month or a lifetime . . . The term essential question was popularized by the Coalition of Essential Schools which makes such questions the object of most student work and study. Require and enable students to make their own answers.