Wild Question Inquiry: A Simple Science Warm-Up Activity for Deeper Student Thinking in Science
What happens when you show students a scientific image and simply tell them to ask questions?
Not answer questions. Not identify vocabulary. Not explain what they can see. Just ask as many questions as they possibly can.
That is the basic idea behind a Wild Question Inquiry activity, a simple but surprisingly powerful science warm-up that can be used with almost any topic. Give students an interesting image, place them in small groups, provide a short amount of time, and let them generate questions without immediately worrying about whether the questions are "good" or "bad."
The result can be an energetic few minutes of classroom discussion that does much more than fill the beginning of a lesson. It gives students an opportunity to practice curiosity, question formation, observation, scientific thinking, and inquiry while giving the teacher a useful window into what students already notice and wonder about.
The approach is particularly useful in science because students are often expected to answer questions throughout their education, but they are given far fewer opportunities to practice asking good scientific questions.
There is also a free space science example based around stars if you would like to try the approach before purchasing anything:
What Is a Wild Question Inquiry Activity?
The concept is deliberately simple. Students are shown an image connected to a science topic and, usually in small groups, have approximately 3 to 5 minutes to generate as many questions as they can.
The image might show the surface of Mars, a human muscle, a tectonic plate boundary, a chemical reaction, a star-forming nebula, an unusual animal, a graph, a medical image, or almost anything else that gives students something to notice.
The teacher's instruction can be as straightforward as:
"Look at the image. Your job is to come up with as many questions as possible."
At this stage, resist the temptation to explain the image. The uncertainty is part of the activity.
Students might begin with simple questions such as "What is that?" or "Where is this?" They might then move toward questions such as "Why does this happen?", "What would happen if the temperature changed?", "How could scientists measure this?", or "What evidence would we need to answer that?"
That progression is valuable.
The Wild Question example deliberately uses the activity as a rapid-fire warm-up and suggests approximately 3 to 5 minutes for students to generate questions in small groups.
Why Asking Questions Is an Important Science Skill
Science is not simply a collection of facts that students need to remember. Scientific investigation begins with noticing something, wondering about it, and attempting to understand it.
A student who can ask a useful question has already taken an important step toward scientific inquiry.
This makes question generation particularly useful at the beginning of a science topic.
Instead of immediately giving students the information they are expected to learn, you can begin by finding out what they notice and what they want to know.
For example, imagine beginning a lesson about stars with an image showing a colourful stellar nursery.
One student might ask, "What are the colours?"
Another might ask, "Are stars being born here?"
Another might ask, "How big is this?"
Another might ask, "Why are some parts brighter than others?"
A particularly curious student might ask, "What would happen if there was no gravity?"
None of these questions needs to be answered immediately. The questions themselves can
become the starting point for the lesson.
This is one of the strengths of the Wild Question approach. The questions do not have to be the destination. They can be the launch point.
How to Run a Wild Question Inquiry Warm-Up
The easiest version requires almost no preparation.
Choose an image that connects clearly to your science topic but contains enough visual information to create uncertainty, curiosity, or multiple possible lines of investigation.
Display the image without explaining it.
Put students into pairs or small groups and give them around 3 to 5 minutes. Tell them that their goal is to generate as many questions as possible.
For the first attempt, I would avoid heavily judging the quality of their questions. The objective is to get students thinking and asking.
You can even make the activity competitive if that suits your class. Give students a point for every question, or challenge groups to reach a particular number. However, quantity should not completely replace quality. Once students understand the routine, you can begin discussing which questions are particularly useful for scientific investigation.
After the question-generation period, bring the class together.
This is where the activity can become much more valuable than simply producing a list of questions.
Ask groups to share some of their questions. Write a selection on the board or display them digitally. Then begin sorting them.
Which questions can be answered simply by looking at the image?
Which require scientific knowledge?
Which could be investigated?
Which would require measurements?
Which might require research?
Which involve prediction?
Which ask about cause and effect?
Which are particularly difficult to answer?
You have now moved from asking questions to thinking about questions.
Let Students Ask "Bad" Questions
One of the most important parts of the activity is creating an environment where students feel comfortable asking questions.
If every question is immediately judged, corrected, or labelled as good or bad, students can quickly learn that it is safer not to ask anything.
The early stage of Wild Question Inquiry works better when students are encouraged to generate freely.
A question such as "Is this on Earth?" might initially appear very basic. But it could lead to "What evidence tells us where this image was taken?" and then to a discussion about how scientists use observations, measurements, instruments, and contextual evidence.
Similarly, "What is that?" might eventually become "What properties could we measure to identify it?"
The goal is not to make every student produce sophisticated questions immediately.
The goal is to help students understand that questions can become more sophisticated with practice.
Moving From Simple Questions to Deeper Questions
Once students are comfortable with the basic routine, you can introduce a question matrix to help them develop more complex questions.
You can help students move through question stems that move through different types of thinking, including questions beginning with "Is?", "Does?", "Can?", "Should?", "Would?", "Will?", "Might?", "What?", "Where?", "When?", "Why?" and "How?"
This provides a useful progression.
A student might initially ask:
"Is this a star?"
A more investigative question might be:
"How can astronomers determine whether this object is a star?"
That can become:
"What measurements would astronomers need to distinguish this object from a planet?"
And eventually:
"How reliable are the methods astronomers use to identify distant objects?"
The students are not simply learning more science content. They are learning to construct questions that require increasingly sophisticated forms of reasoning.
Wild Questions Work Across Science Subjects
One of the best things about this activity is that it is not tied to one branch of science.
For biology, an image of a human muscle, a cell, an unusual organism, a developing embryo, or an ecosystem can generate questions about structure, function, adaptation, health, or interactions.
For chemistry, you could show a reaction taking place, an unusual material, a molecular model, or a photograph from a laboratory. Students can ask about substances, reactions, temperature, rates, properties, safety, or measurement.
For physics, try an image involving light, electricity, motion, forces, waves, or energy. The resulting questions can become starting points for prediction and investigation.
For Earth science, images of earthquakes, volcanoes, rocks, glaciers, weather systems, oceans, or tectonic plates can produce a huge range of questions.
For space science, photographs from telescopes and space missions are particularly useful because students often know enough to recognise something but not enough to explain everything they are seeing.
That uncertainty creates opportunities for inquiry.
Using Wild Questions at Different Points in a Lesson
Although Wild Question Inquiry makes an excellent lesson opener, it does not have to stay at the beginning.
At the start of a topic, it can reveal prior knowledge and misconceptions.
In the middle of a topic, it can help students connect several ideas they have already learned.
After teaching a concept, it can challenge students to ask more sophisticated questions about it.
At the end of a unit, you can show students a new image and see whether the questions they generate have become more scientifically precise.
This makes the activity useful not only as a warm-up but also as a simple way of observing the development of students' scientific thinking.
A Five-Minute Version for Busy Lessons
You do not need to dedicate an entire lesson to the activity.
A particularly practical version is:
Minute 1: Show the image and explain the challenge.
Minutes 2 to 4: Students generate as many questions as possible in small groups.
Minute 5: Select several interesting questions and discuss them.
That is enough.
You can then move directly into your normal lesson.
The activity works particularly well as a regular classroom routine because students gradually become familiar with the process. Once they know what to expect, you can spend less time explaining the activity and more time discussing the questions they create.
A More Advanced Version: Question Improvement
Once students are comfortable generating questions, ask them to improve one.
For example:
"Why are volcanoes dangerous?"
can become:
"Which factors determine how dangerous a volcanic eruption is?"
Then perhaps:
"How could scientists use measurements before an eruption to estimate the potential risk to nearby communities?"
This is a powerful classroom exercise because students begin to see that a question is not necessarily fixed. It can be revised, narrowed, expanded, or made more measurable.
That is an important part of scientific thinking.
Connecting Questions to Scientific Investigation
The activity becomes particularly powerful when students learn to distinguish between questions that are interesting and questions that could realistically be investigated.
Suppose students see an image of a star.
They might ask:
"How old is that star?"
That could lead to a discussion about how astronomers estimate stellar age.
They might ask:
"What is it made of?"
That could lead to spectroscopy.
They might ask:
"How hot is it?"
That could lead to colour, spectra, and temperature.
They might ask:
"Could life exist there?"
That could lead to an entirely different investigation involving planetary systems, habitability, and the requirements for life.
A single image can therefore open multiple routes into a science curriculum.
Using Wild Question Activities as Ready-to-Go Resources
If you like the idea but do not want to spend time finding an appropriate image, designing slides, creating question examples, and developing supporting material, I have created a growing collection of Wild Question Generation Inquiry Warm-Up activities for different science topics.
The resources are designed around the same basic classroom routine: students are presented with an engaging scientific image, generate questions, and then use the activity to develop increasingly effective questioning and inquiry skills.
There is also a free space science example based around stars if you would like to try the approach before purchasing anything:
For biology and health science, the Infertility Crisis Wild Question Generation Inquiry Warm-Up provides a more topical example that can be used to introduce discussion and inquiry around fertility and population science:
For Earth science, there is a Tectonic Plates Wild Question Generation Inquiry Warm-Up that provides an accessible way to begin investigating plate movement and the processes associated with Earth's dynamic crust:
For physics, the Light and Electromagnetic Spectrum Wild Question Generation Inquiry Warm-Up can be used to get students thinking about light, colour, radiation, and the electromagnetic spectrum before moving into more formal teaching:
There is also a Muscles Wild Question Generation Inquiry Warm-Up designed around health and physical education, making the approach useful beyond traditional science lessons:
These are intended to be practical classroom resources rather than complicated lesson systems. The idea is to give you a useful starting point and let the students take the questioning from there.
Why This Works Particularly Well With Science Reading
Wild Question Inquiry can also provide a useful bridge into science reading.
Imagine beginning a lesson by displaying an image and collecting student questions. You can then give students a science reading passage that answers some of those questions.
Suddenly, reading has a purpose.
Students are not simply reading because a worksheet says "read this passage." They have their own questions that they want answered.
You can then ask students to highlight the sections that answer their original questions, identify new vocabulary, and generate additional questions after reading.
This creates a simple cycle:
Observe → Question → Read → Find Evidence → Question Again
That cycle can turn a science reading passage into something much more active.
If you are looking for ready-to-use science reading resources to pair with inquiry activities, you can explore the wider collection here:
The broader collection of classroom science resources is also available through:
Making Wild Questions a Regular Classroom Habit
The biggest benefit may come from using this activity repeatedly rather than treating it as a one-off novelty.
Students can begin to learn that science lessons do not always start with the teacher providing answers. Sometimes they begin with looking carefully, noticing something unusual, and asking what they want to understand.
Over time, you can increase the challenge.
Early in the year, simply ask students to generate as many questions as possible.
Later, ask them to classify their questions.
Then ask them to improve one.
Then ask which questions could be investigated.
Eventually, ask students to design an investigation based on one of their own questions.
The same five-minute routine can therefore grow with your students.
Final Thoughts
A Wild Question Inquiry activity is deliberately simple. Show students an interesting science image, give them a few minutes, and let them ask questions.
But simplicity is part of its strength.
The activity gives students something that can be surprisingly difficult to create in a busy science classroom: uninterrupted time to wonder.
It encourages students to notice before being told, question before being given answers, and think about how questions can become more useful and scientifically testable.
Used regularly, it can become more than a warm-up. It can become a classroom culture in which students understand that asking a good question is itself an important part of doing science.
And sometimes, the best way to begin a science lesson is not with an explanation.
It is with an image and the invitation:
"What questions can you come up with?"
Thanks for reading
Cheers and stay curious
Oliver - The Teaching Astrophysicist
