Inquiry-Based Activities

What are Inquiry-Based Activities?

An instructional practice focussing on making real-world connections to content by exploring through experiential activities and investigating using high level questioning.  Inquiry based activities generally begin with a well crafted and thought provoking question that sparks student interest and curiosity and requires further research or exploring. 

Why are Inquiry-Based Activities important?

Inquiry-based activities spark student curiosity and generate higher levels of student engagement in learning.  They support student independence in the process of learning, and foster opportunities for students to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, skills that will support learning in all subject areas and will help students to grow in becoming more effective learners.  Additionally, Inquiry-based activities provide opportunities for students to engage in collaborative conversations and supports English language development.

How to use Inquiry-Based Activities? 

1. Introduce topic to be explored with an open ended thought provoking question, essential question, or intriguing statement to establish anticipation to explore the topic

2. Provide tools and resources to address prerequisite skills or prior learning necessary for students to be successful in the activity.  Some examples might include providing a Word Bank of Academic Vocabulary and Sentence Starters that can be used during the activity

3. Provide Claims for students to explore or guide students in generating their own questions and claims that reflect the topic introduced 

4. Facilitate experiential activities that students can explore to collect evidence to address their claims.  Consider providing a graphic organizer for students when collecting and organizing their data, or demonstrating to students a possible way to organize or chart their observations and results from the activity.

5. Students examine their results from the experiential activity and formulate conclusions if the evidence supports or refutes the claims that they made. Consider providing students scaffolds and supports to prepare students for academic writing.

6. Facilitate Collaborative Conversations between students for opportunities to discuss and further investigate the conclusions and reasonings from the activity