Essential Questions

What is an Essential Question?

Essential question are those questions which go beyond the curriculum and the text. These are questions that everyone asks themselves in order to understand what it means to be human. During The Kite Runner unit the Honors English II students will be examining these essential questions in the context of the characters and setting of the novel. As they study these questions students should find that they can be answered in many different ways depending on the circumstances which surround the characters.

10th Grade Essential Questions    

1. How do you determine significance of information and convey that significance?
2. What is world view, what components make up a world view and how do you deal with world views that are different from yours?
3. What leads to peace, war, and genocide? What are their implications?
4. What is truth?
5. What are virtues and vices?
6. How do you identify the significance of the historical, political, social and religious context and its relationship with the literature written in that time?

Tools for Explaining Essential Questions

In the children's book The Three Questions, the author Jon J Muth does an excellent job of explaining the importance of the essential questions in life as well as how the answers to them differ at certain points in our lives.