Pick your approach
You can teach Inquisitive right inside your Seesaw routine. Keep Seesaw as the place students go and share their work, and use Inquisitive for the science lesson itself. Pick the setup that fits your class, or mix them across the year.
Approach | Best for | Students work in | You keep |
1. Link Inquisitive into Seesaw | Grades 2 to 5, 1:1 devices | Inquisitive, then post evidence to Seesaw | Text-to-speech, 50+ languages, live student responses, Seesaw portfolio |
2. Download and upload pages | Classes that do most work in Seesaw | Seesaw | One familiar place for students, Seesaw drawing and voice tools |
3. Hybrid: teach, then check in Seesaw | PreK to 1, shared devices | Whole-class lesson, then Seesaw for the checkpoint | Least setup, a portfolio entry for families |
Not sure? Start with Option 3 for the first unit, then move to Option 1 once students know the routine.
Option 1: Link Inquisitive into a Seesaw Activity
Students open the Inquisitive lesson from Seesaw, do the activities there, and post evidence of their thinking back to Seesaw. Set up once per lesson, in about 5 minutes.
In Inquisitive:
Sign in and open the lesson you are teaching.
Click Assign, then choose Select All Activities or only the activities you want.
Copy your Class Link and 4-digit code, or save the QR code image.
Registered students: print their Student Sign In cards so their answers are saved to your Student Responses view.
No registered students: the Class Link and code give view-only access, so answers are not collected in Inquisitive.
In Seesaw
Go to Library, then Create Activity.
Title it with the Inquisitive lesson name, for example "Staying Alive! Day 1".
In the instructions, add the Class Link as a link and paste the QR code image. Add the 4-digit code in the text.
Record a short voice note with directions, such as "Open the link, do the activities, then come back and show me what you found."
Add a response step: a photo of the investigation, a drawing, or a voice recording answering the lesson's phenomenon question.
Save, then Assign to your class.
During the lesson
Students tap the link in Seesaw, work through the Inquisitive activities, then return to Seesaw to post their evidence.
Check live answers in Inquisitive's Student Responses view. Leave feedback on the Seesaw post.
Option 2: Download lesson pages and upload to Seesaw
Save Inquisitive's printable pages as PDFs, then turn them into Seesaw activities students complete with Seesaw's drawing, typing and voice tools. Set up once per lesson, in about 10 minutes.
In Inquisitive
Open the lesson and go to its printable materials, such as worksheets and activity pages.
Download each page you want as a PDF, or print to PDF from your browser.
Save the files in a folder named by unit and lesson so they are easy to find next year.
In Seesaw
Go to Library, then Create Activity.
Upload the PDF. Each page becomes a page students can write, draw or record on.
Add a voice note reading the directions aloud for early readers.
Optional: add the Inquisitive Class Link so students can still watch the lesson's videos or read its ebook.
Save, then Assign to your class.
What changes with this option
Student work lives only in Seesaw, not in Inquisitive's Student Responses view.
Pages in Seesaw don't include Inquisitive's text-to-speech or 50+ language translation. For multilingual learners, download the page in the student's language first.
Option 3: Teach from Inquisitive, check in on Seesaw
Project the Inquisitive lesson for the whole class, then use one Seesaw activity for the lesson's checkpoint. This takes the least setup and fits PreK to Grade 1 or classrooms with shared devices.
Open the lesson in Inquisitive and project it. The lessons follow the 5E model and are built in sessions of about 30 minutes, so you can teach them as written.
Find the lesson's gold star checkpoint activity. That's the one to capture.
In Seesaw, create one activity per checkpoint. Use the lesson outcome as the prompt, for example "I can draw what an animal needs to survive."
Students respond in Seesaw with a drawing, a photo of their investigation, or a voice recording.
Approve posts to share them with families. Each unit's checkpoints then build a science portfolio.
Tip: reuse the same Seesaw activity template for every checkpoint and change only the prompt.
Tips and help
Answers not showing in Inquisitive? Students need to sign in with their Student Sign In card. The Class Link and code alone give view-only access.
Young students can't type the link? Put the QR code in the Seesaw activity. Students can scan it with their device camera.
Teaching several classes? Assign each lesson to each class in Inquisitive, then copy the Seesaw activity to each class.
Save time next year: keep your Seesaw activities in a Library folder for each unit.