Once you determine who will be “driving” the creation of your Driving Question, writing it can seem like a daunting task. As teachers, we are natural perfectionists. We want to meet the requirement of any request and follow the steps laid out before us. Our students’ well-being is always at the front of our minds, so the fear of “messing up” or “getting it wrong” can sometimes feel like a heavy burden. However, writing a Driving Question doesn’t have to be a task that overwhelms or dissuades us from pursuing Project Based Learning. By reading this entry and breaking a Driving Question into smaller parts, the task of writing one can become manageable.
Every Driving Question has three qualities to keep in mind.
1. It cannot be “Googled”.
If you type your Driving Question in a search engine, will you get an answer? If so, then your question is not a Driving Question for a PBL unit. A Driving Question is “open-ended”, meaning it will have more than one answer.
Look at the example below. When you search the simple question, you are given ways to clean a river. Sites with instructions for how to clean a river and specific examples of items needed to do so successfully. The open-ended question leaves room for many answers, cleaning up a river being only one option.
2. There will be more than one answer
When a Driving Question is written, there should be more than one answer. This leaves the students room to discover the answers they wish to pursue. Look at the example of a simple question above, there is really only one option for how to clean up a river. You clean it up.
Now, look at how the open-ended question allows students the freedom to pursue many paths. They may wish to clean up a river, pass out pamphlets with instructions about proper recycling procedures, create a bike lane on Main St. to encourage the community to avoid air pollution or offer baked goods in exchange for plastic bags. There are many routes that the students can take to answer this open-ended Driving Question, all of them very different.
3. It relates to teachable content
This is an area that departmentalized and traditional classrooms may differ. If a departmentalized teacher is completing a PBL unit, then the Driving Question needs to be rooted in content related to the subject taught. For example, if I am the 5th grade Social Studies teacher, my Driving Question must have answers that deeply involve my primary subject area.
However, the beauty of tackling a PBL unit as a grade-level team or as a traditional classroom, is that my Driving Question can relate to any of my core content areas. As the instructor, I can integrate the other content areas.
But if my students want to pursue a Driving Question that has little to do with any of my core content, I can relate it to my core standards through more of an integrated approach. Perhaps I focus on my research standards and teaching students how to research about the Driving Question. Maybe we use surveys to create graphs about pollution, as part of the answer to our Driving Question. Teaching all subjects allows more freedom for integrating core content and standards with Driving Questions related to all topics.
The Structure of a Driving Question
Most Driving Questions are structured with 5 main parts. Here is a quick visual to help you remember the main components of a quality Driving Question.
Special Note: Avoid answering the question within the question. Example: How can we as local environmentalists use pamphlets to assist the community in reducing pollution?
Want more help writing a quality Driving Question? Download this teacher handout to help you create a quality Driving Question for your next PBL unit.
Not sure if your Driving Question is a quality question? Post it in the comments below! OR post it on my Elementary Project Based Learning Facebook Group for help from PBL teachers around the world.