Creating a Culture
of Inquiry

Inquiry is a culture that you will co-create with your students. There is no recipe and no set procedure for inquiry. It is not about finding one answer, but is about exploring many answers.

When you create a culture of inquiry, the process of learning is valued over the products that are created, the learning & thinking are made visible to all, and the questions are valued over the answers.

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"Having a question that isn't answered right away gives you space where you can find other questions. It gives you space to learn and think and have new wonders." ~Grade 5 student, MJE

Using Routines to Make Thinking Visible  

Thinking routines are short, easy-to-learn strategies that extend and deepen students' thinking and become part of the fabric of everyday classroom life.

They can be used regularly, across a variety of content and grade levels, and help students develop ways of thinking about their own thinking.

When a student uses a Thinking Routine to make his/her thinking visible, all students benefit from the shared thinking as collective knowledge is built.

Find some MTV Routines here & here 

Find Opal School's Thinking Tools here. 

Find some ILT Strategy Stickers here.

Power of Questioning

When learning is anchored in exploring questions, educators:

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1. Have a strong image of the learner & believe in their ability (even at a young age) to explore complex questions.

2. Set intentions for the learning and determine overarching themes & questions

3. See themselves as learners, are vulnerable and curious, and model being curious. 

4. Allow their students' explorations within overarching questions to drive the learning.

"They don't stop the learning. They answer questions with questions." ~Alanna, CMS Teacher

Asking Big, Rich,
Complex Questions

Sometimes when we choose overarching themes or questions to guide the learning, it helps us to integrate the learning and connect to the curriculum.

These guiding questions still leave a lot of room for students to explore their own questions throughout the learning.

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There are many places where you can begin as you determine which guiding questions you might want to anchor the learning to as you explore with your students.

You can start with a topic or theme that your students are already interested in, with a rich and complex question, with current events, and with a cool idea.To learn more, click here.

Starting With Beliefs & Intentions for Learning

Letters of Intent are letters that educators can write at the beginning of the year.  We write these letters to clarify for ourselves, and others, what our
beliefs about learning and teaching are.

Writing our intentions also helps us to think about, and make visible, the big and small questions that we want to explore with our students throughout the year as we learn about things that our students care about. 

This allows us to think about the learning without predetermining the pathways that will guide our explorations. 

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Click here to see samples created with educators across our district. 

Strong Image
of the Learner

To create rich, inquiry learning environments, we have to trust our students. When educators believe that students are capable, competent, resourceful, intelligent, imaginative, creative, full of curiosity, and interested in and capable of exploring complex and abstract ideas, they have high expectations of what students can do. Students can contemplate questions about big, complex ideas. These explorations allow  students to continue to see connections and make meaning of the world, and their role in it.

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"Each one of you has inside yourself an image of the [learner] that directs you as you begin to relate to [each learner]. This theory within you pushes you to behave in certain ways." ~Loris Malaguzzi

Using Documentation
to Deepen Inquiry

When we document, we curate valuable information that will guide next steps in learning. Documentation allows us to share the holistic and complex story of learning; however, the ultimate purpose is to AMPLIFY the learning of both teachers and students. When students' words, thoughts, and questions are made visible, they feel heard, valued, and in charge of their own learning. When students are asked to discuss and reflect on documentation that has been collected, they have the opportunity to deepen their learning and the learning of others. See samples here.

Deepen Thinking
With Materials

When we offer our students (and ourselves) the opportunity to engage in other modes of thikning with thinking materials, the materials can become active participants that help students to generate new insights about their thinking. See examples of materials here.

With these visual and symbolic languages available to them, learners can deepen and strengthen their thinking about complex questions and ideas. These thinking tools are particularly helpful in creating a culture of inquiry (student thinking samples). 

Collective Knowledge Building

"If it had to be summed up in one sentence, knowledge building could be described as 'giving students collective responsibility for idea improvment.'" 

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Throughout the inquiry process it is important to continue to have students build their collective knowledge by sharing their thinking, connecting to the thinking of others, building on it, questioning it, and even learning to disagree respectfully with others' theories. Click here to learn more about how to create a knowledge building culture. 

Creating Cultures
of Thinking

Ron Ritchhart also shows us that to create a culture of thinking, we need to consider 8 cultural forces: time, opportunities, language, expectations, routines, environment, interactions, and modeling.

Ron states that, "A culture of thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that can propel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can be hard and challenging mental work.”

Learn more by reading Ritchhart's book, 'Creating Cultures of Thinking.'

Also, go to this website from

Thinking Pathwayz, see this poster,

and use these cards.   

Creating Spaces That Nurture Curiosity

 In order to create learning environments that nurture curiosity, it is important to consider both the physical environment and the emotional environment. To do this, we can: design flexible learning spaces to facilitate collaboration and collective knowledge building, make the thinking and learning visible, and create environments with curious things. 

See 'A Space That Nurtures Curiosity and Wonder.' (Kath Murdoch)

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We also need to create strong relationships with our students and nurture connections between them. When everyone feels like they belong, and that what they think matters, it will feel safer to take risks and share.  

'Un' Planning Template

When learning through inquiry, if you are truly following your students' curiosities and letting them guide the learning, it is impossible to come to class with a fully fleshed out plan. Inquiry requires us to be flexible and adaptable with our plans. To 'un' plan, it makes sense to begin by searching for provocations that we think will excite curiousity.

In essence, we are 'throwing our students a ball,' and we have to be prepared for whatever ball they throw back to us. They might want to take the learning in a direction that is different from where we imagined it might go, and we need to be prepared for that. As we inquiry together, we can be searching for relationships between the inquiries and the curriculum so we can make connections between the two. 

Using Learning Maps
to Guide Inquiry

To truly empower our learners to have ownership over their own learning, they will need to be able to reflect on where they are with their learning, set goals for the next steps in their learning, and capture and select evidence to show how they are meeting those goals. Educators across our district are creating learning maps based on the curricular competencies to allow students to set learning goals, reflect and collect evidence of their growth.  

See more: how to make a learning map, how to use a learning map, & samples co-created with educators in our district.

Multi Modal
Provocations

What will you provoke your students to think and wonder about?

Let your students' voices guide you as you determine how to continue to provoke their thinking throughout the inquiry cycle!

It is important to provoke your students' thinking in a variety of ways before you ask them what they are most curious about. Taking time to build curiosity is important. Don't rush this stage of inquiry - it is a mistake to jump into the next phase too quickly.  

ILT Inquiry
Provocation Bins

We have collected and curated a variety of provocations to inspire curiosity. 

We hope that these collections will inspire you to create your own hands on provocations so your students can play with their ideas as they explore. 

If you are engaged in a co-planning & co-teaching cycles with our team, we can bring the provocations kits with us as we explore teaching and learning with you and your students.

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More ideas for tables see this pinterest board & the early learning team's site

ILT Curated Digital Provocation Lists

As we work with educators and students across the district, we have curated lists of digital provocations that are connected to the inquiries that they are exploring.

Click here to discover provocations (ie: image sets, videos, websites, activities, etc.) that might help you to provoke your students' curiosity.

This list is live and will be updated as we continue to explore inquiry-based learning with others. If you curate your own digital provocations, please share.   

Curated Anchor Texts
To Provoke Curiosity

You can use anchor texts at all levels (K-12 and beyond) of education to inspire thinking and curiosity. Anchor texts can be picture books,  poetry, non-fiction books, novel excerpts, news articles...   

You might want to use anchor texts as read alouds so you can stop and make the thinking interactive and visible as you read the text. 

This will help everyone to discover what students already know, what they are thinking, and what they are curious about.

UN Global Goals
Digital Provocations

In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 common goals. They are known as the sustainable development goals. These goals have the power to create a better world by 2030, by ending poverty, fighting inequality, and addressing the urgency of climate change. 

Educators across our district have been using the UN Global Goals to connect their students to meaningful and authentic learning. Students are being encouraged to inquire & discover ways that they can become change makers who take action to make a difference in the world.