A driving question is characterized by being feasible, worthwhile, contextualized, and meaningful in leading students to pursue detailed answers over time. There are three scenarios for teaching about force and motion: reading about it, learning through an activity, and learning through a driving question. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages regarding curriculum standards. Student assessments would also differ based on the approach. While some topics like dinosaurs may not lend themselves to student investigations, the driving question "What causes the phases of the Moon?" could allow students to explore the question through investigations and learn why the Moon's appearance seems to change.

1. What is a Driving Question?

2. Characteristics of driving questions Feasible: Students can design and perform investigations to answer the questions. Worthwhile: They contain rich science and/or mathematics content, relate to what scientists or mathematicians really do, and can be broken down into smaller questions. Contextualized: They are pertinent to the world, nontrivial, and important. Meaningful: They are interesting and exciting to learners. Sustainable: They lead to the pursuit of detailed answers over time.

3. The Three Scenarios Reading about force and motion Learning about force and motion via an activity Learning about motion and force through a driving question What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach? How do the three scenarios compare with the recommendations found in the NSES and NCTM standards? What would a student assessment look like in each of the three cases?

4. How do you ensure that students have the opportunity to learn specific content material in a project classroom?

5. Do you agree with this statement from the Krajcik et al. chapter (p. 84)? “Other questions don’t lend themselves to students generating their own questions and pursuing solutions to those questions. For instance, it would be difficult for students to ask questions related to the driving question ‘Can we travel to Mars?’ It’s not that the curriculum content contained in the question is not important. It’s that the question won’t allow students to explore through investigations the questions they ask.”

6. First, read below, and then answer this question, how old do you need to be in order to investigate dinosaurs, spaceships, and space travel? Krajcik et al. (p. 100) write, “Dinosaurs are a common type of interest among young children, for example, but there aren’t many investigations that students can perform related to this topic. For this reason, although dinosaurs might be a good topic to read about, they don’t lead to feasible projects….(also) students might be interested in spaceships, but spaceships are not a part of students’ daily lives and probably don’t match any of the district’s curriculum standards.”

7. Let’s examine the questions listed on page 92 (Activity 3.3) of the Krajcik et al. chapter. Are they good driving questions?

8. Is the following a good driving question? Could we make it better? What causes the phases of the Moon? Why does the Moon’s appearance always seem to change?

9. Teacher Quote “One of the biggest advantages to using a driving question as the focus was that it gave students a sense of purpose. As we worked together through this first unit, my students began to realize that there was a reason for everything that we did. No more questions like, ‘Why do we have to learn this?’ No matter how different the activities seemed, the end results were the same. We were trying to find out about tap water.”

10. Benchmark Lessons-that will help to facilitate Moon project progress. Conduct a mini-project investigation (Moon Hoax). Become familiar with relative distances and relative diameters of celestial bodies. Develop research skills on question generation, data collection, analysis, representation, and communication. Determine dependent and independent variables. Examine celestial geometrical configurations. Explore Moon’s appearance (including surface appearance) and determine cause for appearance.