This document discusses encouraging scientific inquiry in outdoor classroom settings. It suggests that inquiry involves asking questions and using evidence to answer them. Teachers can facilitate inquiry by prompting students with questions that focus their attention, encourage counting and measuring, allow comparisons, pose problems or actions, and support reasoning. Examples of prompting questions are provided. The goal is to guide students through questioning rather than telling, and encourage investigation, exploration, and close observation to support student inquiry.

1. Encouraging Inquiry in the Outdoor Classroom Setting

5. The inquiry process can be broken into three parts. We will focus on predictions, or “questions”.

11. This frosty stripe on a fall morning provided a perfect opportunity for reasoning prompts. “Why do you think the lawn has a frost stripe?” “What is your reason?” “What might have caused it?”