A class of 9th graders stand in a semi circle facing one wall of their classroom. The question, “Is progress positive?” is posted above three blank papers. They each hold one to three small sticky notes, and each note contains a question which they’ve spent the better part of their class period generating and refining. All are related to the effects of the development of agriculture.
The teacher steps up to the wall and slowly flips over the three blank sheets of paper. “You already know our compelling question, here are our supporting questions. They can help us organize our thinking but they’re not more important than the questions you’ve generated. Take a look, and consider how your questions might connect, broaden, or specify our thinking.”
Once flipped, the papers form a rough pyramid shape with the compelling question on top and supporting questions below: “How did agriculture change social systems?” “How did agriculture change economic systems?” and “How did agriculture change natural systems?”
These are the guiding curricular questions of the inquiry, planned by the teacher using the Inquiry Design Model (IDM). When displayed on the wall, they are the core of what I’ve come to call an Inquiry Map. At its core, an Inquiry Map is an anchor chart; but where traditional anchor charts serve to help students recall and apply concepts, skills, or classroom processes, an Inquiry Map instead focuses on representing the questions, tasks, and sources essential to the inquiry, and allows students to participate in the co-creation of those elements.
After the questions are revealed, a student steps forward holding a sticky note, “I asked ‘was the environment doing better before or after agriculture?’ because answering it will give us a review of the effects that progress, agriculture in this case, had on the earth. That’s important because the compelling question isn’t just about humans, it’s everything. I would put it here.” The student presses their note against the wall, right next to the third supporting question.
Almost immediately another student steps up holding a note that says, ‘Are forms of stratification still occurring in parts of the world today?’ “Ok, so we learned that agriculture brought about some stratification and inequality, but why? And is it still around the same way now? This can help us know if we learn and fix problems and if it can be positive eventually but I want to know about now, not back then. The student writes the word ‘now’ on their note, and presses it between the first and second supporting questions. Students continue until each has explained and added a question to the wall.
This is just one example of an Inquiry Map in action, and I believe it showcases their potential. Questions, tasks, and sources are the key elements that teachers use in the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) and having these building blocks coherent and aligned is vital to designing a successful inquiry. Too often, however, we don’t let kids peek behind the curtain. A simplified IDM, when displayed visually, constructed with students, and used routinely, not only anchors and propels inquiry learning, but supports the development of inquiry literacy and metacognition in students.
Qualities of an Effective Inquiry Map
Effective inquiry maps:
Include planned curricular elements as well as emergent student thinking. I always represent at least the Questions, Tasks, and Sources from my own planning using the Inquiry Design Model. These essential elements are the frame of the Inquiry Map and help keep the inquiry focused, coherent, and connected to my desired learning outcomes. Student thinking, in the form of additional questions, modifications, sources, etc. are added in planned instructional activities or emergently as they surface.
In my example, which is early in the inquiry, the students are adding and organizing their own supporting questions to the provided frame. As the inquiry progresses, I tack file folders under each SQ which contain the featured sources I’ve selected. Similarly, students have an assignment to find a relevant source and add it to the wall, showing which questions it addresses.
The Inquiry map is clear, concise, and can be seen by all students. The goal is for students to be able to see and reference the Inquiry Map from anywhere and at any time, whether you’ve planned for them to do so or not. They should be able to quickly understand the basic relationships between the elements and connect whatever they are currently doing, be it reading an article with a partner, engaging in a classroom discussion, or working on an assessment. My goal is to see and hear students referencing the Inquiry Map routinely throughout the inquiry.
With my example, the curricular compelling and supporting questions are typed in a bold, clear font and printed each on their own page. Sources and tasks will eventually be displayed similarly. In my classroom, student additions tend to be smaller (on sticky notes, for example) and handwritten. These provide depth and detail but must be approached to read clearly.
The Inquiry map is introduced early and referenced regularly. Inquiry Maps help students identify where they are in the inquiry and what might be next. We want this tool to be available right away, often in the context of the staging activity, and not to be forgotten about as the inquiry grows.
In my example, the Inquiry Map is revealed and added to very early in the inquiry. Robust activities, like adding additional supporting questions, are complimented by more routine engagements like referencing the Inquiry Map at the start of each lesson to situate the day’s learning in its larger context.
Practical Tips
Keep the Inquiry Map modular and flexible. If you feel the impulse to create a beautiful, colorful, illustrated, laminated poster, resist it! An Inquiry Map works best as a living, flexible, and low budget representation of inquiry learning. Even if it’s mostly a representation of your curricular planning, students need to feel some amount of shared ownership and co-creation.
Capture complexity, don’t make it complicated. Arrows, lines, fonts, icons, cartoons, and word bubbles are unnecessary and run the risk of making an Inquiry Map overwhelming and less useful. The map should represent the relationship between the questions, tasks, and sources in the inquiry and their flow. It should support deeper, more complicated thinking but doesn’t need to capture all of it.
Plan first. Using an inquiry map is not the same as developing an inquiry on the fly with students. They should be the distilled representation of your detailed and careful curricular planning.
Keep them up, even after the inquiry. It’s tempting to refresh wall space after each unit or inquiry, but keeping Inquiry Maps up can help students transfer learning between units and notice how inquiries can be structured in similar and different ways.
We want our students to be deeply engaged in learning; driven to answer the current compelling question even as they practice and refine more general inquiry literacies. Making inquiry learning and architecture into an Inquiry Map can make that learning tangible, visible, and knowable by everyone.
