In this series of Strategy Guides, you'll learn about different methods and activities to encourage inquiry-based learning in your classroom.

Planning for Inquiry shows you how to get an inquiry-based curriculum started, how to keep it going, and how to do so while remaining accountable to mandated curricula, standards, and programs.

In this lesson, students use both fiction and nonfiction texts, the Internet, and a K-W-L chart to learn about how animals survive the winter.

Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.

Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.

Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.

This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.

During writing workshop, students research, write, revise, and share their own comprehensive biographies of African American jazz musicians.

Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.

Students choose a question to explore, research it using a variety of resources, organize their information on a TCF chart, and then collaboratively write a class scientific explanation.

Students explore their towns' landmarks, symbols, and people; look at brochures and other informational tools; practice writing for a specific audience and revising; and work collaboratively to create a brochure.

Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.

Students will have a whale of a good time in this lesson in which they use fiction and nonfiction texts to write a letter to an online scientist.

Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.

Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a "time machine" to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.

Students discover that they can make a world of difference when they participate in the online Earth Day bag program.

Students can count on using the 3-2-1 strategy to help them successfully comprehend and write about an informational text.

The important thing about this lesson is… that it connects literature and science. The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown provides a model for original student poems about a content area topic. Web-based bookmarks guide students to appropriate sites on the topic, and a graphic organizer helps them focus their research.

Frogs often appear as the main character in fiction stories, but what do students really know about frogs? Students find out in this lesson in which they research real-life frogs.