Although many science students perform hands-on activities as inquiry exercises, such activities sometimes remain disconnected in the student's mind and fail to nurture a deeper understanding of methods of science and the role these methods play in scientific inquiry. Students may be able to reiterate the steps of the standard "scientific method" but still find it difficult to solve a scientific problem. Place-based inquiry makes science more meaningful to students, which translates into student ability to solve scientific problems because they are actively engaged in solving a problem. In this article, the authors share how they have been helping inservice teachers in Missouri learn to use place-based investigations as a model for scientific inquiry. The authors also share several strategies on how teachers can design and facilitate place-based instruction. Two examples of representative projects that use place-based instruction are also presented. (Contains 1 figure.)