Welcome to another episode of Blooming Curious.
You know that moment when a student asks a question that stops you in your tracks,
not because it's complicated, but because it's so beautifully simple and curious
that you realize they're doing exactly what we've been trying to teach all along.
They're inquiring naturally.
But here's the thing, somewhere between essential questions and
driving inquiries and all the other terms that we throw about, we've made
inquiry sound like rocket science.
Today, I wanna strip away all that jargon and show you how to make
wonder work in your real classroom or homeschool environment with
real children starting tomorrow.
Inquiry isn't about perfect questions or elaborate protocols.
It's just about genuine curiosity, meeting practical learning.
I'm gonna give you five down to earth inquiry strategies and at the end
I have something special for you.
So make sure you stay to find out about that.
Number one, start with real problems, not textbook questions.
Instead of asking, oh, what are the three branches of government?
Try out, what do you think can happen at school if we change the lunch menu?
But some kids want pizza and others want healthier options.
How should we make this decision fairly.
The difference is real problems have stakes.
Children care about the outcome because it affects them.
If you wanna teach kids about fractions instead of, you know, giving them a
piece of paper divided up into blocks.
Make an actual pizza or bring in cupcakes and say to the kids, how do
we make sure that we get a fair share for 24 kids with these three pizzas,
and suddenly fractions become real.
So look at your next lesson and find one place where you can replace a hypothetical
scenario with something that actually is happening in your children's lives.
Number two, embrace the messy middle.
Here's what nobody tells you about inquiry.
It does get messy before it gets clear.
Students will go down rabbit holes, they'll ask you
questions that you can't answer.
They'll pursue dead ends, but this isn't failure.
This is learning in action.
It's doing the learning.
I learned this when I decided to give my students time to investigate topics
that they were interested in, but I wanted to make sure that I still met the
outcomes just in case admin walked in.
So I said they could investigate anything they wanted, provided
that it met our outcomes, which were all written on the board.
They were reading.
Some were building structures, others were creating clothing pieces, learning
to measure, cut out patterns of their designs and sew them together in
their exploration of French fashion.
It was busy and it was definitely messy.
But there was also deeper learning than any textbook could provide , or
what I could provide by giving them dry facts from the curriculum.
In fact, here's a story about, one boy came up to me and said he wanted to do
a project on the influenza virus, not the flu virus, the influenza virus.
This was pre COVID.
And I said to him, well, does it fit with one of our learning intentions?
And he said.
Let me think.
He went away and he came back and he said, well, we're learning about
how to stay healthy in health so I can show everyone how we can protect
ourselves from getting influenza.
I couldn't argue.
This kid went on, he researched, he made the most incredible
model of the flu virus.
He wrote a report on it and he gave simple ways that people could
protect themselves from catching flu.
Now, doing that, what do you think he learned?
He covered English, writing, science, health, technology, inquiry skills, as
well as how to work with others since he was doing this project with a partner.
So here's the practical tip.
When students veer off your planned path, ask yourself, are they
still learning something valuable?
And if it's yes, allow them to explore for a bit.
Set a time limit if you need it, but don't stop their genuine curiosity.
Tip three, make learning visible with simple tools.
You don't need fancy digital platforms to make inquiry work.
Some of the best inquiry happens with basic tools like sticky notes and chart
paper, and just a good conversation.
Try the, the notice Wonder next method where students look at something, a
photograph, a data set, an artifact or a problem, and they simply note what
they notice, then what they wonder.
And then what they want to investigate next.
I've seen this in my pre-primary or kindergarten class.
Kindergarten for those of you in America, learning about lady birds, and then going
on to explore how ocean animals move through the water and with year five
students collecting data on the amount of hours they sit, stationary are desks.
It's the same simple structure.
But with different depths.
Here's your practical tip.
Create a classroom poster or area with your three columns.
Use it regularly, not just for special inquiry projects, and even five minutes
of notice, wonder next can transform how students approach new content.
Number four, build on student questions.
Don't replace them.
Asking good questions is a skill.
As educators, it's our job to ask good questions.
But inquiry flips this.
We need to help students ask their own good questions.
This doesn't mean accepting every random wondering.
It means teaching students to refine their curiosity.
When a student asks, why is a sky blue?
Don't immediately launch into, you know, rally.
Is it called rally scattering instead?
Try.
Well, that's interesting.
What do you notice about the sky that makes you wonder about the blue?
Help them build on their natural curiosity rather than replacing it with your agenda.
Here's your practical tip.
Keep a parking lot of student questions visible in your classroom, and then
regularly return to those questions and help students see which ones might
connect to your current learning or could become mini investigations.
In fact, in my interview with Tonya Gilchrist, she spoke about this.
We can't veer off piste every time a student comes up with an interesting
question that may not be relevant to what we're learning about at that moment, but
you can just park those questions on a wonder wall and then choose one or two of
those questions once a week to explore.
This way you also honor children's agency and everyone learns
something new and interesting.
I'll link to a previous podcast episode about that too, where I've spoken
exactly about how we can use Wonder Walls as actual tools in our classroom,
not where just wonderings go to die.
Number five is create low stake sharing opportunities.
You know inquiry dies when students feel like every question has to lead
to a perfect presentation and project.
Create informal ways as well for students to share their thinking.
You can do think pair shares, you can do gallery walks.
You can do just check-ins or even just get them to talk to the person next to them.
Allow students to quickly share one thing they figured out or
one thing they're still wondering about, or one connection they made.
Without any pressure, no grades.
Just genuine exchange of ideas.
Here's your practical tip.
Build in sharing moments throughout your lesson, not just at the end.
Let students process their thinking out loud regularly, and you'll be
amazed at how their inquiry deepens.
Now, how do we bring all this together?
Inquiry really doesn't require big budgets or special equipment.
It just requires a willingness to follow children's curiosity, and your own.
Inquiry isn't about having all the answers or implementing the perfect framework.
It's about creating space for genuine wonder and giving students the tools to
pursue their questions systematically.
Now, here's my offer.
If you are ready to bring more authentic inquiry into your classroom and you want
practical support, then right now you can go and get the Curiosity Toolkit,
which is a planning framework that helps you plan across the curriculum so that
you can weave inquiry into your lessons.
It's just a simple tool.
It's a framework to help you tweak the way you approach your planning.
There are also meta cognition question starters included, that can help you
get students thinking about their learning and provocation station
prompts as well as 33, yes, 33 picture book suggestions across eight broad
themes with wonder questions included.
And when you purchase this for the mere $10, you get free access to
the Blooming Community, which is my private group, where you can ask
questions and get the support you need from other like-minded educators.
To get the toolkit, you just go to go.blooming curious.com/curiositytoolkit.
I'll leave a link in the show notes for you.
Remember, the best inquiry starts with one simple question.
What if?
What if your next lesson began with wonder instead of objectives?
What if your students left class with more questions than answers?
What if learning felt as natural as curiosity?
Your students are already full of wonder.
Your job is simply to let it grow.
Thanks for listening today.
I really appreciate you.
Please get in touch if you have any questions or wonderings, and
please click on that share button and send this episode to a friend or
colleague so that this show can grow.
Until next week, take care of yourselves and stay blooming.
Curious.