How to incorporate wonder into the classroom has been a question on my mind this summer. I want to use wonderopolis.org this year to inspire our class to wonder, research, read, discover, collaborate, share and create. (Just a few small goals...)
My wonderful librarian suggested today that we have a "wonder block" every other week in the library! I LOVE this idea. Every other week students will come to the library with wonder notebooks in hand. This will be a time when they research wonders they have, record important thinking in their notebooks, record important new wonder words, and ask further questions. I want a share time to be built in where we will share the process of our research, wonderful new facts, strategies to help us understand non fiction, wonder words that are important, ways to hold thinking, etc. I'll have a short mini lesson to guide us along the way.
My librarian is going to do lessons at the beginning of the year on how to find books you need on nonfiction topics independently. The library is a great place for us to spread out. We are surrounded by reference materials, technology (8 computers and a smart board) and of course great non fiction. Our school just opened last year so our books are all very new! I hope this special block of time will take us great places this year!
I have been thinking a lot about how I will promote inquiry in my third grade class next year. I've been reading lots of great blogs, professional books, and even tweets on this subject and hope that my classroom next year is one where real authentic learning propelled by authentic purpose and intrinsic motivation is encouraged as well as valued.
I read about www.wonderopolis.org in Choice literacy this winter and immediately emailed the site to my fellow teachers. I started thinking about how I would use this site. Then I stumbled upon a great blog teachingin21.blogspot.com that gave me so many great examples of how to use the site to get kids motivated to learn and to inquire.
Here are some goals for next year....
- I want to model for kids how a WONDER or a question or an interest can lead them to dig deep into topics, inquire and research based on their individual questions and interests.
- I want to set up a wonder station in my classroom. I am hoping this can be a spot to read wonderopolis articles online, record wonders kids are having, provide lots of non fiction books to read, research facts and record important thinking as well as further wonders they have.
- Each kid will have a wonder journal where they will list wonders and record new important learning.
- I am hoping that through looking at the structure of Wonderopolis articles as mentor texts to do some non fiction writing of our own through kidblog.org! I think blogging is going to give us some authentic purposes for writing. I am excited to get kids writing for a real audience and not just me the teacher.
- I want to build in lots of sharing time for kids to talk with the whole class, small groups and partners about their wonder learning.
- Another great blog, thinkingstems.blogspot.com gave me the idea to create a whole class wonder jar at the beginning of the year and have kids bring in artifacts that represent their wonders.
Kelly Gallagher got me thinking this year about students prior knowledge and how the experiences they bring to the text help them understand and make meaning. He encouraged teachers to bring in more social studies, more science, more content area reading to close gaps in understanding. I am hoping through year long inquiry projects this will help kids build more background knowledge.
Thank you to everyone who gave me such great ideas this summer and posted great ways to use Wonderopolis to promote Wondering and inquiry!!
