Big Questions and Supporting Questions
Know what makes a question big and worth investigating — no single quick answer, more than one possible view — and break it into smaller supporting questions whose answers build up towards answering the big one
What a learner can do afterwards
- Tell apart a big question ('Why do people move to new places?') from a quick-lookup one ('What is the capital of France?')
- Break a big question into two or three smaller questions that would each help answer it
- Explain how the answer to a small question feeds the bigger one (e.g., 'Knowing what jobs there were tells us why families moved here')
The lesson
Some questions have one quick answer you can look up, like 'What is the capital of France?' Other questions are much bigger. They do not have a single short answer, and different people might see them in different ways. Those big questions are worth digging into.
Maya wonders, 'Why do people move to new places?' That is a big question. No single fact answers it. So Maya breaks it into smaller questions: 'What jobs were people looking for?' and 'What made their old home hard to stay in?' Knowing what jobs there were tells her why families moved. Each small answer builds up to the big one.
Compare two questions: 'What is 5 + 3?' has one quick answer: 8. But 'Why do people move to new places?' does not. People could point to jobs, family, or safety. That range of answers is what makes it a big question.
To spot a big question, ask yourself: Is there just one quick answer? Could someone else see it differently? If the answer could vary, you have found a big question worth breaking down.
A big question has no quick answer and room for different views, so break it into smaller questions and build up to the answer.
Watch it
Where it sits
Learn first
This opens up
Where this leads
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.