Young children often ask "why?" But most students need to be pushed to take ownership of their inquiry and develop questions independently.

Ask students to add questions about a topic by assigning a cluster diagram. The number of "bubbles' on the diagram makes your expectation of multiple questions very clear and help them understand that one or two questions aren't enough.

Imagine Cluster

Combine an I see, I wonder template along with an image to prompt students to identify areas for questioning and stimulate their curiosity.

I See, I Wonder

You can also encourage questions with a 5W's organizer, but instead of sharing facts, details or observations, ask students to add questions in each area.

5 W's Organizer

As students grow in their inquiry abilities, start with a blank Wixie page and ask students to type, sort, connect, and prioritize questions without structure or limits.

2. Recalling prior and background knowledge as context for new meaning.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have also demonstrated that the more familiar students are with prior knowledge, the easier it is for them to recall and work with new information.

Use a KWL chart to prompt students to share what they Know about a topic, prompts them to come up with questions about additional information they Want to know and provides a place to retell or restate what they have Learned.

Assigning the KWL in Wixie makes it easy to review student work from any device to identify misconceptions and provide feedback on student thinking.

KWL Chart

Add statements or claims to an Anticipation Guide and students to share their thinking based on prior knowledge. Students start by dragging the words agree or disagree to the Before column. Then, they read the text or watch the movie and repeat this process in the After column to show if their thinking has changed.

Anticipation Guide

3. Build foundations for powerful inquiry.

The goal of inquiry is to not only get students to ask questions, but to begin thinking critically about a problem and solution. Use organizers and scaffolds to coach learners through a project-based or design-thinking process without telling them exactly what to do or think. As they grow in their skills, empower students to choose which scaffolds to use to further transfer responsibility for learning to your students.

An Empathy Organizer prompts students to question a topic in the context of a problem to be solved and provides a creative approach for tapping into and identifying prior knowledge.

Empathy Organizer

A 5 Whys organizer helps students find root issues to problems they are exploring.

5 Whys Organizer