High school US history teacher Bry Roemer has found another creative way to use Big Questions: as an exit slip to provoke intrigue at the beginning of a unit.
She starts by having students watch the Harold and the Purple Crayon children’s story by Crockett Johnson (video of story here) and then asks the students to think about what kind of world they 
would create if they found and claimed uncharted territory? After a short discussion, students examine John Gast’s famous painting American Progress and complete this guide. The guides asks them to think about how the symbols in the painting convey Manifest Destiny as understood and promoted by western settlers. For the final step, students fill out an exit slip providing an initial response to the Big Question:
How did the United States create a new world when expanding the border westward– and what were the positive and negatives?
What’s interesting here is that Bry has decided to introduce a very elaborate, multi-dimensional question right at the beginning of the unit, knowing full well that students won’t have the requisite factual knowledge to shape a comprehensive response. The decision is deliberate, though, because the overall plan is to stoke student interest at the outset and then slowly draw out that interest as students learn more about the events of western expansion. Thus, she has set in motion a learning experience where one big idea is revisited multiple times in different settings, from different angles, with different events of US history, thus deepening student understanding over time.
Bry’s use of this exit slip reveals an important truth of Big Questions– they are very flexible in their application. We saw that flexibility earlier as they were used to frame an entire course and then also to frame specific lessons, as seen in these posts:
US HistoryGovernment– How can you protect your freedoms without limiting someone else’s?
Success in teaching through Big Questions requires the development of a fresh routine of thinking, something that must be reinforced continually over time. Maybe the exit slip is a safe entry point to begin the journey!
Socrates Questions 
