Guided Inquiry
Overview
In guided inquiry, teachers scaffold student learning and help students use their own language for constructing knowledge by active listening and questioning. While exploring and investigating a problem, teachers guide students to talk through their thinking, which supports development of students' Critical Thinking and inquiry skills. Guidance can vary in specificity, frequency and duration, yet any guided inquiry tends to be better for learning than unguided inquiry. Types of guidance often provided in guided inquiry include prompts, scaffolds and explanations. To make guidance more inclusive for all learners, visual or picture-based prompts can also be included. When designing guided inquiry, it is important to note that younger learners may require more specific guidance, but learners of all ages can benefit from supports like worked examples. Guided inquiry can be effective for all ages, across domains, when adequate guidance is provided. What type and frequency of guidance is adequate will vary, depending on both the learners and their context.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this school embraces inquiry-based learning in multiple subjects, including reading and writing. As students and teachers ask questions that drive deeper thinking, students develop their curiosity and excitement for learning.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Instructional Approaches Strategies
Flipped learning is when the delivery of traditional content (i.e., lectures, and videos) occurs outside of the classroom, allowing class time to be used for more active and application-based activities.
Read-alouds are an instructional practice in which teachers read aloud from a text to students, modeling fluent reading, asking questions, and actively engaging with students to enhance their understanding.
Retrieval practice requires students to access information, or get information “out” from Long-term memory in order to support better retention and understanding.
Spaced practice is a learning strategy that deliberately spaces out learning or study sessions over varying periods of time, with the purpose of increasing retention, understanding, and long-term knowledge acquisition.
A strengths-based approach is one where educators intentionally identify, communicate, and harness students' assets, across many aspects of the whole child, in order to empower them to flourish.
