In this article, an approach to unit plans using essential questions is described within the context of general music education and illustrated in the unit "Repetition and Contrasts: Understanding Music Through Form." This unit is founded on the essential question: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music? Learning guideposts provide direction and impetus for the essential questions on which the unit is founded. Learning guideposts detailed for this unit include content and materials, processes, culminating project/performance, and propensities. Summaries of lessons illustrate how the ideas presented in this framework transfer to daily instruction. Student assessment is embedded within lessons from multiple perspectives denoted as "assessment for learning," "assessment as learning," and "assessment of learning."