Your Guide to Meaningful Inquiry Walls in the Classroom
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Your Guide to Meaningful Inquiry Walls in the Classroom
inquirED
3rd-grade Inquiry Wall submitted by Layne Pflieger & Anya Logvinsky, The John Thomas Dye School (CA)
Each unit of Inquiry Journeys, inquirED’s elementary social studies curriculum, includes the creation of an Inquiry Wall – a dynamic display that grows alongside your students’ learning. From start to finish, it captures the questions, connections, and discoveries your students make, serving as both a learning tool and a record of the content knowledge they’ve explored through the inquiry process.
Key Takeaways
The Inquiry Wall setup guides will help you get started, but remember, your Inquiry Wall is unique to you and your students. It can be minimal or detailed, messy or polished, simple or artistic – all those approaches are okay! The key is that it works to support your students’ understanding, encourage collaboration, and document your inquiry process. Let it grow organically, and don’t stress about perfection. It’s the learning it represents that matters most.
Keys to Building Your Inquiry Wall
Let it grow over time
Starting your Inquiry Wall early sets the stage for learning and discovery with your students. Introduce it in the first few lessons of your Inquiry unit, and watch as it evolves to capture your students’ growing understanding, new connections, and big ideas. Pair it with a Vocab Wall, which grows alongside it to highlight key terms and concepts. Together, these tools give your students visible reminders of their learning journey, helping them track their progress and deepen their knowledge.
Pro Tip: Give your Inquiry Wall more space than you think you’ll need – it will grow faster than you expect!
Turn ideas into visual connections
Your Inquiry Wall can be a large concept map, showing how students’ ideas are connected. For example, in a kindergarten unit like Navigating School, you might start with a photo of the school at the center, with images of different locations (classroom, music room, library) placed around it. Positioning these items relative to their real-life positions (e.g., putting the music room image next to the classroom if they are physically adjacent) helps students build mental maps of their environment. This visual structure makes abstract connections more concrete and accessible.
Pro Tip: Keep yarn or string handy to visually connect concepts as students uncover them – it adds depth to your wall and sparks conversation!
“Our day revolves around social studies and our Inquiry Wall is the center of that learning. It’s messy, too. It doesn’t have to be perfect – because inquiry can be messy, and that’s okay.” Katie Spies, Kindergarten teacher, Easton Elementary
Showcase student work and artifacts
Over time, your wall becomes a living tapestry of learning. Add student work, notes, anchor charts, images, and labels that reflect their discoveries and understanding. This process brings students’ learning to life and turns the wall into a shared resource you can refer to again and again.
Pro Tip: Make it meaningful! Let students post their own work as a ritual or assign a student archivist to update the wall – it’s a fun way to build ownership.
Build vocabulary along the way
Pair your Inquiry Wall with a Vocab Wall or anchor chart that grows throughout the unit. Add key terms as they emerge naturally during lessons, clustering related words together to reinforce connections. This ensures vocabulary grows in context with the inquiry, supporting both comprehension and language development.
Pro Tip: Add vocabulary gradually rather than all at once! You can even cluster related terms together – this helps students connect terms to their learning.
Reflect and revisit
Your Inquiry Wall isn’t just a display – it’s a living resource. Pause during or after lessons to reflect with your students. How does new information connect to what’s already there? What should we add? These moments of reflection deepen understanding and reinforce the idea that learning is an ongoing process.
Pro Tip: Dedicate time to reflect on the wall with your students and let them pose new questions – it keeps the inquiry alive and dynamic!
“We included an Inquiry Wall in every unit because it makes learning visible and keeps the purpose of the investigation at the forefront of students' minds. It’s a living, breathing representation of the questions students ask, the connections they make, and the knowledge they build together.” Elisabeth Ventling Simon, Chief Academic Officer and Co-Founder, inquirED
Celebrate student work
Unlike a static bulletin board, your Inquiry Wall changes and grows throughout the unit. By the end, it tells the story of your students’ learning, showing how their questions, discoveries, and connections evolved. Snap photos of the wall as it develops to document progress, celebrate your students’ work, and share ideas with other classrooms.
Pro Tip: Share your photos in the Inquiry Work Gallery to inspire educators and celebrate your classroom’s journey!
Help! No Wall Space?
Not every classroom has ample wall space, and that’s okay. Here are a few alternatives:
- Virtual Inquiry Wall: Use a digital platform or learning management system to display images, notes, and student work. Students can contribute via shared slides, boards, or discussion threads.
- Tri-Fold Display Boards: A portable tri-fold board can serve as a moveable Inquiry Wall, letting you store and bring out the display as needed. This is especially useful in classrooms shared by multiple teachers or in flexible learning spaces.
In Summary
Your Inquiry Wall grows as your students explore new ideas, visually building and connecting their knowledge. It keeps learning dynamic, encourages participation, and supports reflection and deeper understanding. Paired with a Vocab Wall, it helps students develop and reference key vocabulary in meaningful ways. Whether it’s a prominent display or a creative alternative, your Inquiry Wall makes the inquiry journey visible and engaging for everyone!
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Inquiry Journeys, inquirED's K-5 social studies curriculum, engages students in inquiry-based learning, strengthens literacy skills, and supports teachers every step of the way.
inquirED supports teachers with high-quality instructional materials that make joyful, rigorous, and transferable learning possible for every student. Inkwell, our integrated core ELA and social studies elementary curriculum, brings ELA and social studies together into one coherent instructional block that builds deeper knowledge, comprehension, and literacy skills. Inquiry Journeys, our K–5 social studies curriculum, is used across the country to help students develop the deep content knowledge and inquiry skills essential for a thriving democracy,
