As summarized in the overview, Story of Your Place (SoYP) is an inquiry-based curriculum. This means that it starts with questions! SoYP participants follow the Geo-Inquiry process to devise questions about their place based on the following six guiding question categories:
- Settlement: Who has lived in or near this place?
- Land Use: How have they utilized its resources?
- Physical: What are the physical and biological characteristics of this place?
- Human: What are its cultural, psychological, economic, etc. characteristics?
- Comparison: How does this place compare with other places?
- Connection: How does this place connect to other places?
These questions suggest the many facets of place, and how places can be both unique relative to other places as well as connected to them.