Tuesday, September 3, 2013

A Week of Wonder

Last week, we embarked on a week of wonder. What a wonderful week it was!
This is a series of educational events the we will call "Wonder Monday". 
We will experience our science and wonder through an inquiry based process.



We started with our first wonder object: The Cicada Shell


Next, we asked questions, investigated and chronicled these thoughts on our Kidblog.org page.


We also coded these thoughts on our bulletin board to help us understand our non-fiction thought process.


Once our thoughts were chronicled, we went through a series of research and discussion. We also sited our sources on our Kidblog.org page.

Our final bit of research was done with our new friend Sampson.


I was pretty sure Sampson was dead when I brought him to school but, "Lucky Us!", he was not (ask the kids for the story).
We were able to observe Sampson and identify all of the parts of the cicada that we had learned about. We also measured him and he was exactly how big we had heard he would be!




Through this process, we answered so many of our questions and even came up with many more! We couldn't have asked for a better "Wonder Monday"!

Please stay tuned to hear how we reflected about our learning. It is a pretty impressive showing of their knowledge.

*Teacher Note:
I had educational goosebumps last week with all of the excitement but two events really made me excited.
1. The owning of questions: The students remembered who asked specific questions and that student got to "own" that question. Paul wondered about a stinger and the students made sure that any stinger info went straight to Paul. This happened on more than one question and occasion.
2. After a long weekend, I had 4 students bring in Wonder objects today. Today's science lesson was spontaneous and authentic because of that. Thanks to our 4 friends, we were able to have wonder stations and use our new thinking stems with our friends. I am so amazed and really jazzed about this year!



**Sorry for the lengthy post. I just couldn't wait to share all of this. :)




1 comment:

  1. I can't wait to hear more about all the wondering happening in room 222! Maybe all of you can share some of your learning with our class. Have a great Friday Mrs. Bright's class!

    Mrs. Bright- You are so brave for letting the cicada crawl on your arm.

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