Inquiry is a process of discovery.

By using discipline-specific skills and processes, students can learn to ask compelling questions, seek information, think critically, and draw their own evidence-based conclusions in social studies subjects.

 Inquiry

• Historical Investigation Links
• Maryland History Day (The 2017-18 theme is "Conflict AND Compromise in History.")
• IDM: Inquiry Design Models  These examples of inquiry activities and lessons from C3Teachers.org have all the materials you need to complete them. They include US History, World History, and contemporary inquiry activities.  
• Teaching With Primary Sources These inquiry kits from the Maryland Humanities contains all the sources you need to conduct great historical investigations. 

Questioning

• Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding  This online Book from Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins lays out the benefits, characteristics, and purposes of using essential questions to drive instruction and includes several strategies for building student questioning.
• The Right Question Institute This organization has a variety of resources for building questioning into instruction.
• Helping Students Develop the Ability to Ask Good Questions This article from Scholastic Education by Sue Jackson explores the different types of questions that help students build skills.
• QFT This strategy from the Right Question Institute can be used to brainstorm a topic, generate student curiosity, and build student consensus that can drive an investigation.

• See-Wonder-Hear-Think Strategy This strategy helps students to build questions based on the observation of a given object or image.

• Socratic Questioning This strategy is a teacher-directed means of building student's critical thinking and models effective questioning. 

Research

• BCPS Grades 9-12 Research Portal This research guide includes a sequence of skills for each step in the inquiry-based research process aligned to learning standards. A selection of skills-building resources and tools is provided for each skill.
• BCPS Research Modules: Social Studies A Series of Slam Dunk, self-guided research modules for Government, Psychology, U.S. History, and World History are found here.
• BCPS High School Research Course  High School students are challenged to complete an original and independent research that is characteristics of college-level courses, offered by the Office of Digital Learning.
• Steps in Writing a Research Paper (ESC Online Writing Center, Suny Empire State College) This college site provide support for students in every step of the inquiry research process.
• OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab Another great site for students needing support in the writing process.
  

Skills Videos

• How to write an  A+ Thesis Statement
• How to write a Note Card for a Research Paper
• What are In-Text Citations?
• Notecards to Outline

Copyright and Citations

• Why We Cite Sources
• Copyright Procedures (BCPS Office of Innovative Learning)
• NoodleTools
• NoodleTools-Creating Outlines
• Citation Machine
• EasyBib