You and your buddy have spent a lot of shared experiences both in and outside of school. You've worked on class projects and you've built stuff in your back yards. You catch yourselves reminiscing about some of the more exciting things that you've done and a couple of them seem to be possibilities for this project. After all, you've got the skills and know what materials you need. The only question remaining is, "will this fit the research?"
The teacher takes us through an activity to help identify our research question in the next class. Both of you struggle with this, because you really haven't spent too much time thinking about your research yet. You've been focusing on what you are going to make! After the identification session, he shows everyone some examples of what past students have made and talks about how the message that the student was trying to communicate fit the medium that they used. A lightbulb goes on in your head. You need to fit your research topic to what you've decided to make! That kind of makes sense to you. You know that essay topics are similar in a lot of ways because you are writing an essay. You need to find a topic that has a message that is best communicated by the project that you want to make.
You go back to the explore phase of the inquiry project and try and get a spin on the topic that is interesting and fits the project that you want to make. After a few days of reading, taking notes, and talking to others in your Inquiry Circle, you focus your thinking and identify a topic that you think might work. You're buddy has come up with something similar, but different enough. You both go to your teacher and run your ideas by him. He likes your direction and encourages you to press on.
Back to the books. Literally! You now know that you need to gather enough information about your topic to be able to start creating your final product. You find yourself going between research, designing and actually making the project. Sometimes, you get to a point with the making that you realize you need to answer further questions before you can move ahead. Other times, you find that you need to research specific techniques for addressing a problem with the making itself. The whole process seems to get muddy, but you feel like you are moving ahead at least as much as you seem to be going in circles. After some time, you get to a point where you feel that your project is pretty much complete. You recognize that there are still questions to be answered, but maybe they need to be left for a future project (or some summer reading!)
You show up to school on presentation day with your project in tow. Your buddy's looks great and you both sigh in relief as you recognize that you did go different directions and the projects don't look like clones of each other! You get up to talk about your research and the class seems genuinely interested. They are attentive and ask some great questions, many of which you answer with confidence. This was a hard project, but you feel like you got a lot out of it and... might just have enjoyed yourself!
This route was a little bit of a challenge for our intrepid student but a couple of interesting things came out of it. First, his relationship with another student really helped them both move along. Social learning groups can just happen, as they did in this situation, or they can be constructed through the use of Inquiry Circles. Inquiry Circles are smaller groups within the class that typically are brought together via some common aspect of the assignment that support each other in their work. They can share making skills, research resources or simply be there to be critical editors of each others' work.
The second interesting aspect of this scenario is that the making influenced the research from early on. Guided Inquiry Design often puts the Create phase after the story has been researched fully. But, in this case, the students decided to look at their topic through the lens of the making that they would do. This can result in a forced research project where there is a clear separation between medium and message, but it can also provide an opportunity for students to look at their topic from a unique angle. Support would typically be needed to make sure that their connection between the final product and their research is genuine. This could be in the form of regular teacher face to face check-ins, Inquiry Journal entries, or Inquiry Circle discussions.