What's the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking

by Jim Burke

Many people have written about how theory (or research) relates to practice; Jim is one of those rare professionals who live the relationship. - Arthur Applebee
NAEP advisor,
Validation committee member for Common Core,
Author of Curriculum as Conversation Why a book about questions? "Because when students' instruction is organized around meaningful, clear questions," writes Jim Burke in What's the Big Idea? "they understand better, remember longer, and engage much more deeply and for greater periods of time." Jim shows how making essential questions the center of your teaching can ease the tension between good teaching and teaching to the test while giving students dependable, transferable tools for reading, writing, thinking, and participating in the real world. Going in depth on his own units for frequently taught books, Jim shows how to plan lessons, units, and even entire courses around big ideas to help students: "Although no one thing can ever be the solution to all problems," Jim writes, "this book demonstrates the ways in which questions can address your concerns and develop in our students the mental acuity and fluency necessary to succeed in school and at work, as well as to achieve a sense of purpose in their personal lives." The only question now is, Are you ready to change your students' learning and lives?

Genres: Teaching, Education, Professional Development, Nonfiction, Writing, College, School

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

A longtime English teacher, Jim Burke is the author of more than 20 books and senior consultant for the Holt McDougal Literature program. Jim has received several awards, including the 2000 NCTE Exemplary English Leadership Award. In 2009, he created the English Companion Ning―the largest online community of English teachers in the world. More recently, Jim has served on the AP English Course and Exam Review Commission and the PARCC Consortium.

Reviews

[Lena]

Honestly I wouldn't bother with this book. Half of it is just the author hyping himself up as a great English teacher and plugging his other books and websites. I think there are some decent bits of information to take away in it but overall I kind of hated reading it because the author is so full of himself.

[Gary Anderson]

Here are lessons and advice based on successful experiences with a wide range of Jim Burke's students, all based on the concept of using inquiry as the foundation of units, lessons, and learning.

Jim draws on and makes connections with many of the best contemporary thinkers as he provides the theoretical bases for his chapters. Although many of the lessons deal with specific texts, they are easily adaptable to any works a teacher might be using in class.

This important book is supported by superb graphics, online access to handouts and organizers, and useful appendices.

[Grace]

I love this book because it gave me many great ideas to engage students in reading literature. It is practical, gives great advice, and shows how to create units based on the big questions we all face in life.

[Meenoo Rami]

I have about 30 post-it notes throughout this book. I had to stop myself because it was getting a bit out of control.

[Michael Loveless]

I debated whether to give two or three stars to Jim Burke's What's the Big Idea. If I were a literature teacher, I would have given it a three or a four, but for me as a history teacher looking for ways to incorporate essential questions more effectively into my classroom, the book was worth three stars at most. I like a book that identifies an idea, explains how it works, and gives numerous examples of it in action. This book was loosely connected to the idea of essential questions. The author basically just described how he teaches two of his classes. I have no doubt that he's a good teacher, but the book went into so much detail about the processes he uses, that it was hard for me to see how there was a central idea for me to learn. Yes, big questions were used, but they were just one thing among many suggestions he made in the book.

[Juli R]

Burke's latest book offers theory and practice into centering teaching around questions. Consider this: "Questions are the Swiss Army knife of an active, disciplined mind trying to understand texts or concepts and communicate that understanding to others" (3). The book provides an explanation into why questions should frame units and lessons, offers four sample unit plans, and includes questions broken down by grade level to help teachers design lessons and units using questions. Burke provides examples of his students' work throughout the book.

[Abby]

I'm a first-year ninth grade English teacher and am already looking ahead to next year. I intend to redesign my classes and focus on inquiry-based learning. Jim Burke provides great advice in this book, and because he also teaches ninth grade English teacher I found his examples and lesson plans to be especially helpful.

[Tracy Jaconette]

Wonderful book, especially for middle school/high school teachers, about using questions to drive instruction and inquiry. Jim includes some samples of student writing that demonstrate what is possible when you make the learning engaging and relatable.

[Matt Sautman]

An excellent case for scaffolding, Jim Burke’s What’s the Big Idea? may occasionally seem dated for an era where educators embrace digital classrooms on a regular basis, yet the pedagogy Burke advocates for remains essential for intellectually driven classroom design.

[Tyson Bohlinger]

This book is a valuable resource for any ELA teacher looking to grow in their craft and refine their pedagogy.

[Teacherward]

How funny that I didn't realize there was a study guide for reading this book at the end of the book until I got to the last few pages!

[Constantine]

2 copies

[Amy]

Great way to set up a student centered English Classroom.

[Courtney]

As always, Burke provides pre-service and practicing teachers with realistic guides to make literature more meaningful to students. The reality is that schools have required reading lists, and on those lists are canonical titles that every teacher struggles with getting students engaged. By accessing students' prior knowledge, the texts become more meaningful to them and allows for more successful connections. Like many great ideas, however, he encourages teachers to know the needs of their students and make the proper modifications based on those needs as well as the teacher's strengths. Not only that, but his rubrics and sample lessons are only meant as guides, not lock-step criteria that has to be covered exactly.

Something that I really appreciate about Burke is that he does a really good job of incorporating current research within his texts to show the validity of his approaches to teaching literature. Not only do I enjoy the research, but I appreciate his effortless writing style. He's not really coming up with anything too innovative; however, he is showing English teachers that students can learn doing activities other than whole-class-discussions-turned-lecture. The goal should be to get students to share how much THEY know, not showing them how much WE know. Regardless of the Scholar Academic Ideology, students aren't sponges waiting for us to impart knowledge; they have their own, and we need to let them construct it.

[Vel Veeter]

This is the book that more new English teachers should be reading. It doesn’t get into everything you’ll be doing as a teacher–Jim Burke has other books for that, but it does really help with understanding how to put together units. Curriculum is really frustrating to deal with for a lot of reasons. In some cases you have opaque standards and a “pacing chart” that tells you how much time you should be spending with the broad strokes (vocab, fiction, nonfiction, writing, research) but doesn’t help you understand what to do day by day. Or there are required texts, but they don’t really get much beyond: teach this book. Or worse, there’s a heavily scripted (and boring) one size fits all system.

So what this book does is help to shape broad units around big questions. This sounds simple, sure, but it really really does help to put a shape around the weird kinds of crap you have to cover in an English class. I am not saying other classes are easier to teach–I am not, but I do think that English is a lot like biology. It’s a lot of reading and writing and discovery through thinking, but you can cover a lot of different topics in a lot of different ways and in a lot of different orders….you’re dealing with process and form as well as content, so it’s hard to figure out how to order it and plan out how much of what. This book does help provide a structure (but not too much structure) to that process.

[Lindsey Jones]

In preparation for Burke's upcoming visit to my district, I read this book. Loved the practical ideas Burke has presented with real classroom work samples and snapshots. While this book came out a few years ago, I think it is a perfect read to address the demands of the Common Core State Standards. It will be hugely beneficial to teachers in my district as we design thematic units driven by an essential question. Burke also pushes a lot back on the students - Much of his pedagogy reminded me of that shared in Kylene Beers & Bob Probst's Notice & Note. Can't wait for Burke's visit in June!

[Debs Taylor]

Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of Jim Burke, so I probably come to his material ready to love it. This book focuses on using a big idea to ground your teaching, which is something I am exploring right now. He gives examples from his teaching (I love that he is a high school teacher), loads of photocopiable organizers and assignment sheets, and lots of helpful questions and guidelines for teaching in this way. I will be using his ideas for next year's R & J teaching, and next quarter's foray into To Kill a Mockingbird.

[Sarah Alvarado]

Wonderful reminders and great new ideas. Burke is so inspiring: every detail of instruction is leveraged to maximize effectiveness, but it's all wrapped up in deeper level questions and inquiry. He is also a master at crafting the 'big questions' this book is based on ("am I my brother's keeper?" for Of Mice and Men; how do relationships shape our values, actions, lives for Romeo and Juliet); it's not only his organization that makes his teaching so great, it's his wisdom.

[Jean]

Another school round robin summer reading book, this one I borrowed from a fellow teacher. Overall, it's a guide to assure that through reading students make connections to their own lives and explore the ideas that interest them. I especially appreciated "Types of Questions" and "The Big Questions" list.

[Erika Forth]

I skimmed through this book in preparation for teaching thematic units next year. There was some good stuff in here, however, I found most of his examples were created for his high achieving AP students; I couldn't imagine using some of his ideas/resources in my extremely inner-city, urban classroom.

[Katherine Lewis]

I'm totally inspired. I want to stalk Jim Burke's classroom! I read this just in time to start teaching high school English, and I know it's going to have a HUGE impact in my planning process. So far, this book has stayed with me in my teacher bag, alongside my sprial and course textbooks.

[Pei Pei]

Nothing new here in the conceptual department if you're familiar with Wiggins and McTighe, but the book's strength is in its practicality and generosity in sharing concrete curriculum resources, rubrics, and reproducibles.

[Kay]

Jim Burke's books are always wonderful, but this one is particularly good for understanding how to keep classroom instruction rich & meaningful while at the same time following district and state mandates.

[Michael Heneghan]

Amazing professional development book I'm reading with a group of colleagues and my sister. It is going to change the way I design my classes. Last year I used Essential Questions to guide my planning and learning, but this is taking it to the nth degree. Can't wait.

[Bri]

This book is filled with a ton of ideas to help teachers focus in on the big ideas in units. It gives guides to asking the right questions to get students involved and motivated and it provides graphic organizers and student examples within lessons.

[Kendall Yoder]

I would highly recommend this text. Burke goes through different units that center around essential questions. There are many useful resources in this book that he gives you, such as graphic organizers and lesson ideas.

[Kim]

It's like UbD for English teachers! Yay, Jim Burke!

[Debbie]

Another winner from my classroom hero, Jim Burke.

[Keri]

I like Burke's overall approach. Some of the assignments might need to be revised a bit to make them more engaging for the grade level I teach (eighth grade).

[Alexis]

Great activities! Plus I always struggled with helping students learn how to generate questions. This shows you how to teach that skill