A Perfect Central Question

As a student teacher, I really struggled with planning. Coming up with that perfect central question was particularly difficult for me. I wanted my questions to be accessible to all my students and still be really engaging. When I was trying to plan a lesson about the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, I kept jumping to things that were very abstract and more relevant to my college classes, which I had literally just completed. I was also worried that I was making my lessons too basic because I wasn’t confident in how to plan for teaching ninth graders. I tried an agree/ disagree prompt in response to the following statement: “The Treaty of Versailles had the potential to make lasting peace in Europe.” I tried a binary question: “Did the Treaty of Versailles make World War II inevitable?" And, I even tried a more open question: “What was the most important impact of the Treaty of Versailles?” Yet, I couldn’t figure out what kind of question would work for my students and engage them.